Best Books for Writers

From the newly published to the invaluable classic, our list of essential books for creative writers.

Passwords Primeval: 20 American Poets in Their Own Words by Tony Leuzzi Published in 2012 by BOA Editions The author interviews successful poets about their work and focuses on prevalent themes, images, and their process of revision. More About This Book at: Open Library Goodreads LibraryThing	642 Things to Write About: A Journal by The San Francisco Writers' Grotto Published in 2011 by Chronicle Books Get your creative juices flowing with this collection of witty, outrageous, and thought-provoking writing prompts compiled by thirty-five members of the San Francisco Writers' Grotto, a workspace for professional writers. More About This Book at: Open Library Goodreads LibraryThing
An Absorbing Errand: How Artists and Craftsmen Make Their Way to Mastery by Janna Malamud Smith Published in 2012 by Counterpoint Press The author uses stories of artists' lives, personal anecdotes, and insights from the author's work as a psychotherapist to examine the psychological obstacles that prevent people, including poets and writers, from staying with, and relishing, the process of art-making. More About This Book at: Open Library Goodreads LibraryThing	The Weekend Novelist Rewrites the Novel: A Step-by-Step Guide to Perfecting Your Work by Robert J. Ray Published in 2007 by Watson-Guptill Publications The author of The Weekend Novelist guides readers through a series of seventeen weekend revision exercises. More About This Book at: Open Library Goodreads LibraryThing
Writing Poetry to Save Your Life: How to Find the Courage to Tell Your Stories by Maria Mazziotti Gillan Published in 2013 by MiroLand Publishers The author, a widely published poet and the executive director of the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College in Paterson, New Jersey, combines her own personal story as a writer with suggestions for writers at all stages of development. More About This Book at: Open Library Goodreads LibraryThing	In Fact: The Best of Creative Nonfiction by Lee Gutkind, editor Published in 2004 by W. W. Norton This collection of work previously published in the literary journal that helped define a genre includes writing by Diane Ackerman, Phillip Lopate, John McPhee, Richard Rodriguez, Floyd Skloot, John Edgar Wideman, and Terry Tempest Williams. More About This Book at: Open Library Goodreads LibraryThing
The Art of Styling Sentences by Ann Longknife and K. D. Sullivan Published in 2012 by Barron's Educational Series The new edition of this reference book for students, writers, and educators reviews the fundamentals of correct sentence structure, then presents twenty basic sentence patterns that encompass virtually every effective way in which simple, compound, and complex sentences can be structured. More About This Book at: Open Library Goodreads LibraryThing	Building Fiction: How to Develop Plot and Structure by Jesse Lee Kercheval Published in 2003 by University of Wisconsin Press In this resource for fiction writers, short story and novelist Jesse Lee Kercheval equates structuring fiction with building a house. Kercheval offers advice on generating story ideas, developing characters, and revision. Each chapter is accompanied by writing exercises as well. More About This Book at: Open Library Goodreads LibraryThing
Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey, editor Published in 2013 by Knopf By presenting the habits and routines of various artists—including writers such as Maya Angelou, W. H. Auden, Jane Austen, Ann Beattie, Simone de Beauvoir, Patricia Highsmith, Arthur Miller, Gertrude Stein, Philip Roth, and Voltaire—Mason Currey aims to show, as he writes in his introduction, "how grand creative visions translate to small daily increments; how one's working habits influence the work itself, and vice versa." More About This Book at: Open Library Goodreads LibraryThing	After Confession: Poetry as Autobiography by Kate Sontag and David Graham, editors Published in 2001 by Graywolf Press In this collection of twenty-eight essays, poets such as Frank Bidart, Marilyn Chin, Billy Collins, Louise Glück, Kimiko Hahn, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Sharon Olds explore the autobiographical impulse in poetry. As Library Journal writes: "Each weighs in on a different area of the discussion, but all are evocative and engaging. One quickly discovers that the confessional poem's legacy extends further than the expected Plath, Sexton, and Lowell. Sappho, Shakespeare's elusive figures, Milton's daughters, and Mary Wordsworth are as likely to be evoked by these writers, as they demonstrate how poetic voice spans an infinite variety of combinations." More About This Book at: Open Library Goodreads LibraryThing