Best Books for Writers

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

  • The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry

    by
    Ilya Kaminsky and Susan Harris, editors
    Published in 2010
    by Ecco

    “Reading an anthology of world poetry gives one a chance to overhear similarities, of what Anna Akhmatova once called ‘correspondences in the air,’” writes Ilya Kaminsky in the introduction to The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry. “That is, moments when authors of different geographical and historical circumstances, languages, and traditions, seem to address each other in their works.” Edited by Kaminsky and Susan Harris, editorial director of Words Without Borders, this book collects the work of international writers such as Muhammad al-Maghut, Constantine P. Cavafy, Rubén Darío, Mitsuharu Kaneko, Adélia Prado, and Marina Tsvetaeva, some of whom had not previously had their work translated into English. Reading this extensive selection of poems offers an understanding of the history of the written word, blurring the borders of the world through the sensibilities of language. 

  • The Art of Revision: The Last Word

    by
    Peter Ho Davies
    Published in 2021
    by Graywolf Press

    The fifteenth and final volume in Graywolf’s preeminent Art of series is a long-overdue and deeply satisfying exploration of a frequently discussed yet widely misunderstood and underestimated aspect of every writer’s working life. Peter Ho Davies, the author of three novels, including A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself (Mariner Books, 2021), and two story collections, begins his careful study of revision by addressing its invisibility, with the majority of readers and writers seeing only the final draft. Davies uses examples from his own books as well as from the work of other writers, including Raymond Carver, Carmen Maria Machado, and Flannery O’Connor, to illustrate his points. By turns deeply personal and intellectually rigorous, The Art of Revision: The Last Word is a moving appeal to writers on the importance of reflecting not only on their process, but also on their lives. 

    Read an excerpt from The Art of Revision here.

  • Memory Into Memoir: A Writer’s Handbook

    by
    Laura Kalpakian
    Published in 2021
    by University of New Mexico Press

    “The memoir is not the story of what you know, it’s the story of how you learned it,” writes Laura Kalpakian in Memory Into Memoir. “As a genre, the memoir is narrow enough to focus on a single summer in the life of the writer, and broad enough to encompass experience before that writer was born.” In this step-by-step guide, the award-winning novelist and memoirist walks experienced and new writers alike through the challenges of writing a memoir, offering practical advice, unique prompts, and thorough discussions that highlight how the genre differs from others. With chapter titles such as “The Past Meets the Page,” “Developing Character,” and “Revising the Memoir,” Kalpakian encourages writers to trust their instincts and embrace “not just the way things happened, but the way the writer thinks they happened.” 

  • Writing Tools: 55 Essential Strategies for Every Writer

    by
    Roy Peter Clark
    Published in 2008
    by Little, Brown Spark

    “If you feel left behind, this book invites you to imagine the act of writing less as a special talent and more as a purposeful craft,” writes Roy Peter Clark in the introduction of the tenth anniversary edition of Writing Tools: 55 Essential Strategies for Every Writer. “Think of writing as carpentry, and consider this book your toolbox.” Gleaned from a career as a journalist and teacher, Clark writes fifty-five short essays on ways to confront writing and its challenges, accompanying them with examples from the work of over two hundred writers, including Albert Camus, Diane Ackerman, and Amy Tan. With chapter titles such as “Fear not the long sentence,” “Give key words their space,” and “Break long projects into parts,” Clark offers practical advice to help writers reach fluency in their craft. 

  • The Knowledge: Where Poems Come From and How to Write Them

    by
    David Kirby
    Published in 2021
    by Flip Learning

    “My job isn’t to make you a poet. You’re a poet already. My job is to show you a slew of techniques and tricks and processes that will make you the best poet you can possibly be,” writes poet and critic David Kirby in The Knowledge: Where Poems Come From and How to Write Them, a playful and comprehensive craft book that walks readers through the stages of writing a poem, as well as what it is to build a life around the art form. With engaging chapter titles such as “Accidents Will Happen,” “Cruelty, or Readers Like Pleasure but They Adore Pain,” and “Furbelows, Lozenges, and Doohickeys,” the award-winning professor of English at Florida State University invites writers of all stages to craft poems the way Jimi Hendrix talked about making music: “Learn everything, forget it, and play.” As much a craft book as an anthology, the work of writers such as Joy Harjo, Terrance Hayes, Franny Choi, and Natalie Diaz are included with astute analysis, along with unique prompts for any writer seeking to liven up their skills along the way. 

  • Tolstoy Together: 85 Days of War and Peace

    by
    Yiyun Li
    Published in 2021
    by A Public Space Books

    “I’ve found that the more uncertain life is, the more solidity and structure War and Peace provides,” writes Yiyun Li in Tolstoy Together, which encapsulates the virtual book club the author began in 2020 inviting readers around the world to discuss Tolstoy’s epic novel with her. The book includes Li’s daily reading journal that comments on craft and technique, historical context, and character studies, as well as contributions from writers such as Garth Greenwell, Carl Phillips, and Alexandra Schwartz, among hundreds of other readers. Featuring a schedule and framework for following along, Tolstoy Together is both a guide and motivating companion that illustrates the power of reading together. 

  • Why Translation Matters

    by
    Edith Grossman
    Published in 2010
    by Yale University Press

    “Translation always helps us to know, to see from a different angle, to attribute new value to what once may have been unfamiliar,” writes Edith Grossman in the preface of this fourth installment of the Why X Matters series published by Yale University Press. “As nations and as individuals, we have a critical need for that kind of understanding and insight. The alternative is unthinkable.” The celebrated translator of writers such as Miguel de Cervantes and Gabriel Garcia Marquez argues for the cultural importance of translation, and an appreciation for the translator’s role, in the hope to “stimulate a new consideration of an area of literature that is too often ignored, misunderstood, or misrepresented.” With chapter titles such as “Translating Cervantes” and “Translating Poetry,” and “A Personal List of Important Translations,” Grossman inspires new ways to think about and discuss translation. 

  • Best Debut Short Stories 2021: The PEN America Dau Prize

    by
    Yuka Igarashi and Sarah Lyn Rogers, editors
    Published in 2021
    by Catapult

    Best Debut Short Stories 2021: The PEN American Dau Prize is an anthology published by Catapult highlighting twelve fiction writers whose outstanding debut short stories were published in a literary magazine, journal, or cultural website and selected by the award’s judges: Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Kali Fajardo-Anstine, and Beth Piatote. Ranging from speculative fiction to realist stories about immigration by writers such as Heather Aruffo, Lindsay Ferguson, Khaddafina Mbabazi, and Alberto Reyes Morgan, each piece comes with an introduction by each publication’s editor, whose insight provide a view into the selection process as well as the future of literary publishing. Now in its fifth edition, this anthology is perfect for any reader or writer seeking to be introduced to the year’s most exciting literary magazines and emerging fiction writers.

  • 100 Poems to Break Your Heart

    by
    Edward Hirsch
    Published in 2021
    by Mariner Books

    “Our superficial, materialistic, media-driven culture often seems uncomfortable with the true depths of feeling,” writes Edward Hirsch in the introduction to 100 Poems to Break Your Heart. “It’s as if the culture as a whole has become increasingly intolerant of that acute sorrow, that intense mental anguish and remorse that can be defined as grief. We want to medicate such sorrow away.” In this anthology, Hirsch collects one hundred poems from the past two hundred years that contend with grief and loneliness—from poets such as William Wordsworth, César Vallejo, Gwendolyn Brooks, Louise Glück, and Victoria Chang—and accompanies each poem with an essay discussing use of language and literary devices, as well as historical context. The celebrated poet and critic uses his years of expertise to break down each poem’s lasting impact, allowing for any reader to learn as well as relish the pleasure of an emotional education in this expertly arranged collection. 

  • What About the Baby? Some Thoughts on the Art of Fiction

    by
    Alice McDermott
    Published in 2021
    by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

    The author of eight novels, three of which were named Pulitzer Prize finalists, including Charming Billy, which won the 1988 National Book Award, McDermott turns for the first time to nonfiction in this collection of essays, lectures, and observations on the art of writing fiction. “I expect fiction to be about the pain and sweetness of life,” she writes in a chapter titled “What I Expect,” in which she shares passages by Mark Helprin, Toni Morrison, John Cheever, Philip Roth, Eudora Welty, Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, and others to illustrate the reasons we turn to fiction to learn life’s lessons. “I expect fictional narrators to stand naked, talking into the dark, so that the words they choose are neither self-conscious or self-serving nor—worse yet—author-conscious or author-serving but direct and honest and as true as they can make them.” A book as meaningful for readers of fiction as it is for writers, What About the Baby? is filled with wisdom acquired over decades of writing and teaching. 

  • A Poet’s Craft: A Comprehensive Guide to Making and Sharing Your Poetry

    by
    Annie Finch
    Published in 2012
    by University of Michigan Press

    “The alchemy of poetry transmutes the intimate chatter of our lives into something deeper and more powerful,” writes Annie Finch in the introduction to A Poet’s Craft, a guide to the entire process of writing a poem from inspiration to publication. With chapters on metaphor, rhyme, syntax, and more, this complete volume includes hundreds of classic and contemporary poems demonstrating examples of form and technique by poets such as Mahmoud Darwish, Brenda Hillman, Li-Young Lee, and Gwendolyn Brooks. Teaching guide, anthology, and craft book all rolled into one, this is a necessary book for any reader or writer of poetry seeking to further their understanding of the written word. 

  • Outside the Lines: Talking With Contemporary Gay Poets

    by
    Christopher Hennessy
    Published in 2005
    by University of Michigan Press

    In twelve intimate and craft-focused interviews, Christopher Hennessy probes some of contemporary poetry’s most celebrated poets, including Frank Bidart, Rafael Campo, Timothy Liu, and Carl Phillips. Each interview explores the poets’ complete work up until the book’s publication in 2005, illuminating the evolution of their work, as well as the connections between form and identity. “One may be tempted to argue that the fact that all are gay is simply a happy coincidence,” writes Hennessy in the introduction. “But to pretend that their sexuality doesn’t matter would be to squander an opportunity (one of many this book offers) to learn about how identity shapes a poet’s work, as it must.” Closing with a prescient list of emerging poets—Mark Bibbins, Randall Mann, Richard Siken, and Mark Wunderlich, among others—Outside the Lines makes the case that the lineage of gay poets is an essential one which “includes some of the most visionary, masterful writers of the past hundred years.” 

  • Poetry as Persuasion

    by
    Carl Dennis
    Published in 2001
    by University of Georgia Press

    In Poetry as Persuasion, Carl Dennis, author of numerous poetry collections including the Pulitzer Prize–winning Practical Gods, focuses on the relation of the poet to the reader. Dennis asserts that the “persuasiveness of a poem depends on the presence of a definite speaker with a sharply defined point of view,” and uses examples from the works of poets such as Homer, John Ashbery, and Emily Dickinson to illustrate his theories and poetics. With chapter titles such as “The Voice of Authority,” “Irony,” “Myth,” and “Poetry as Liberation,” Dennis takes readers across all aspects of the steps of writing a poem, offering both inspiration and advice to practicing poets and avid aficionados of the art form. 

  • The Ecopoetry Anthology

    by
    Ann Fisher-Wirth and Laura-Gray Street, editors
    Published in 2013
    by Trinity University Press

    “As we have been coediting The Ecopoetry Anthology, we’ve become ever more convinced that the environmental crisis is made possible by a profound failure of the imagination,” write editors Ann Fisher-Wirth and Laura-Gray Street in the preface to this anthology compiling the works of writers—including Walt Whitman, H.D., Robert Hayden, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Elizabeth Bishop, and William Carlos Williams—responding to the “burgeoning environmental crisis.” The book begins with a history of poetry about nature, creating a lineage between eighteenth- and nineteenth-century poetry and the ecopoetics movement of the 1960s, the era in which contemporary ecopoetry bloomed. With an introduction by former U.S. poet laureate Robert Hass, this collection achieves a generous and capacious archive of living in the Anthropocene, offering a road towards hope through profound intelligence and emotional poetry. 

  • A Braided Heart: Essays on Writing and Form

    by
    Brenda Miller
    Published in 2021
    by University of Michigan Press

    In a series of essays on the craft of writing creative nonfiction, Brenda Miller explores emerging essay forms—such as the short-short, the braided form, and the hermit crab essay—and offers practical advice on how to invigorate one’s writing practice. Miller’s lyrical essays both instruct and mirror the points she investigates, as she uses personal memories and her experience as a professor of creative writing at Western Washington University to craft her lessons. Ranging in subjects from braiding challah bread to ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arrangement, Miller balances relatability with clear instructions on how to challenge and inspire writers of prose. 

  • Why We Write About Ourselves: Twenty Memoirists on Why They Expose Themselves (and Others) in the Name of Literature

    by
    Meredith Maran, editor
    Published in 2016
    by Plume

    In twenty essays, this anthology edited by author and book critic Meredith Maran gleans the expertise of major memoirists—including Sue Monk Kidd, Cheryl Strayed, Jesmyn Ward, and Edmund White—who are dedicated to the craft of creative nonfiction. Topics range from turning oneself into an authentic character to the art behind exposing difficult personal details, and the practical obstacles that come in the way of writing. Why We Write About Ourselves is an authentic and inspiring read for anybody seeking to tell their truth. 

  • Walking Light: Memoirs and Essays on Poetry

    by
    Stephen Dunn
    Published in 2001
    by BOA Editions

    “We are choreographers of our poems. We intuit, will, pace, digress, suppress, stitch, and arrange—all of which requires a sense of evolving design,” writes the late Stephen Dunn in the introduction to this expanded version of his collection of essays on poetry, originally published by W. W. Norton in 1993. Ranging in topics from the relationship between art and sport, to the role of the imagination and the necessity of surprise when writing poetry, Dunn uses his decades of expertise to make simple the most ineffable quandaries. Displaying not only the Pulitzer Prize winner’s expertise but his commitment to the art of teaching and writing, Walking Light is an entertaining and enlightening read for all those seeking to be inspired. 

  • Writers On Writing, Volume II: More Collected Essays From the New York Times

    by
    the New York Times
    Published in 2004
    by Times Books

    In this second volume of original essays from the popular New York Times column, Writers on Writing compiles advice from revered authors such as Diane Ackerman, Margaret Atwood, Frank Conroy, Mary Karr, and Amy Tan. With an introduction by Jane Smiley, this collection includes essays that range from thoughtful and serious reflections, to wry and hilarious advice, offering a glimpse into the challenges and rewards of the creative process. “How to read this book?” asks Smiley. “Read it like eavesdropping or like twisting the knob on an old radio and tuning in stations from far and wide. Read it like an explorer, then wander among the authors’ other works.” 

  • Our Endless and Proper Work: Starting (and Sticking to) Your Writing Practice

    by
    Ron Hogan
    Published in 2021
    by Belt Publishing

    Emerging from a newsletter the author launched in 2018 called “Destroy Your Safe and Happy Lives” and taking its title from a line in a Mary Oliver poem (“To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work”), this inspiring volume helps readers not only to develop an ongoing writing practice but also to consider that practice as a worthy goal rather than a means to publication. Hogan writes, “What if we thought about writing as a personal process of self-discovery, a way of gravitating towards stories and themes you feel passionately about and learning more about those passions as you go along—and learning how to share that passion with others?” Organized in chapters with titles such as “Reclaiming Your Time for Writing,” “Finding Your Groove,” and “Preparing Yourself for the Long Haul,” and punctuated with illustrations by Emm Roy, Our Endless and Proper Work offers a powerful realignment of priorities for the creative writer. 

  • Toward the Open Field: Poets on the Art of Poetry, 1800–1950

    by
    Melissa Kwasny, editor
    Published in 2004
    by Wesleyan University Press

    “This anthology intends to trace a movement from conventional form to exploratory field, and to do so, not by presenting the work of literary historians but by collecting some of the important prose works of poets themselves,” writes Michelle Kwasny in the introduction to this 2004 anthology of manifestos, prefaces, craft essays, and letters from poets writing between 1802 and 1950. Organized into three sections—“Form as Proceeding,” “Crise de Vers,” and “The Poem as a Field of Action”—with introductions to each prose work by Kwasny, readers can track the development of literary styles and thought across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by the most influential European and American poets, such as Aimé Césaire, Mina Loy, Charles Olson, and William Wordsworth. Expertly arranged and researched, this seminal anthology is one worth keeping on the shelf for any writer looking to expand their understanding of what literary writing has done across time and can still do. 

  • The Writing Life

    by
    Annie Dillard
    Published in 2013
    by Harper Perennial

    “When you write, you lay out a line of words. The line of words is a miner’s pick, a woodcarver’s gouge, a surgeon’s probe. You wield it, and it digs a path you follow,” writes Annie Dillard in this reissue of the 1989 classic The Writing Life, which tracks, step by step, the writing process of the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and the emotional landscape a writer can undergo when writing something new. With an intimate and direct second-person point of view, these essays invite the reader into the mindset of a writer encountering inspiration every day and looking for ways to practically apply those observations to the writing of a book. For newcomers and experienced writers alike, this book welcomes all to participate in the creative process and outlines how to do so in the most practical and inspiring ways. 

  • Coin of the Realm: Essays on the Life and Art of Poetry

    by
    Carl Phillips
    Published in 2004
    by Graywolf Press

    “Beauty, at least when it is referred to by that name—suffers the same treatment by too many contemporary poets (and students of poetry) as does authority in poetry,” writes Carl Phillips, recipient of the 2021 Jackson Poetry Prize, in “The Case for Beauty,” an essay included in Coin of the Realm. “It gets dismissed as naïve, or irrelevant, or somehow on the wrong side of the field on whose other side we are all assumed to have happily set up camp together.” In these incisive and imaginative essays, Phillips wrestles with topics such as authority, identity, consciousness, and beauty, and how these subjects relate to writing poetry. With examples ranging from ancient Greek to contemporary poetry, Phillips shows writers what it is to be a rigorous thinker in and outside the work one writes. 

  • Book Wars: The Digital Revolution in Publishing

    by
    John B. Thompson
    Published in 2021
    by Polity

    The author of the highly accessible and comprehensive Merchants of Culture: The Publishing Business in the Twenty-First Century (Polity, 2010) returns with an in-depth account of the turbulent decade in which publishing was thrown into disarray by the digital revolution. Thompson relates how the industry was transformed as new opportunities opened up for individuals and organizations while tech giants like Google and Amazon moved in to capitalize in a new publishing environment. More than a study of the faltering rise of e-books, Book Wars explores the ways in which the digital revolution altered traditional publishing as well as self-publishing, audiobooks, bookselling, and the broader ways in which we communicate and share writing, information, and “content.” Read an excerpt from the book’s introduction in our online exclusive.  

  • Victims of a Map: A Bilingual Anthology of Arabic Poetry

    by
    Adonis, Mahmud Darwish, Samih al-Qasim, translated from the Arabic by Abdullah al-Udhari
    Published in 2005
    by Saqi Books

    “Modern Arab poetry has evolved against the background of the turmoil of the Arab world,” writes translator Abdullah al-Udhari in the introduction to this bilingual anthology of Arabic poetry featuring Adonis, Mahmud Darwish, and Samih al-Qasim, first published in 1984 by Saqi Books. “This collection is meant to provide English-speaking readers with a sense of the frontiers of Arab poetry today.” With the original Arabic and the English translations side-by-side, this anthology renders in song the intimate experiences of poets who have used their work to resist victimization and express their aspirations as contemporary writers. The work of these three poets, as al-Udhari writes, “led to the breakdown of classical Arab poetic conventions and redrew the map of Arab poetry.” Featuring detailed biographical notes and historical context to the works, this collection will help broaden the language of any writer seeking to express the urgent and ineffable. 

  • Aiiieeeee!: An Anthology of Asian American Writers

    by
    Frank Chin, Jeffery Paul Chan, Lawson Fusao Inada, and Shawn Wong, editors
    Published in 2019
    by University of Washington Press

    “A lot has changed since the publication of Aiiieeeee!” writes literary scholar Tara Fickle in the foreword of the third edition of this historic anthology edited by Frank Chin, Jeffery Paul Chan, Lawson Fusao Inada, and Shawn Wong. “But we could also say that a lot has changed because of Aiiieeeee!; or that Aiiieeeee! presciently anticipated these changes, not least by highlighting the vibrant diversity of Asian American experience in the literature.” Forty-five years after its original publication in 1974, this reissue carries the anthology into a contemporary discussion about American literary traditions, featuring fourteen works by authors such as Momoko Iko, Wallace Lin, Toshio Mori, John Okada, and Sam Tagatac. This classic and inspiring collection is a reminder of the essential place Asian American writers hold in the American literary canon. 

Pages