Best Books for Writers

Inspired by Hippocampus Magazine’s annual creative nonfiction writers conference, this anthology includes craft essays on the writing life, paths to publication, and engagement with an audience. Featuring essays from creative nonfiction writers such as Steph Auteri, Randon Billings Noble, Athena Dixon, and Beth Kephart, this collection covers impostor syndrome, writing strong beginnings and endings, hybrid genres, and the limits of using memory, to name a few topics. The book also includes writing exercises and prompts as well as reading recommendations. Ideal for any writer experimenting with new forms of storytelling and looking to improve their craft, Getting to the Truth offers practical lessons and inspiration from the minds of over twenty contemporary creative nonfiction writers.  

“For so many of us, ‘craft’ is a word that is double-edged when it comes to writing poetry,” writes editor Rishi Dastidar in the foreword to this collection of essays that not only discusses poetic forms and devices but explores the idea of craft itself. Organized into four sections—“On Poetic Forms,” “On Making Poems,” “On Bringing Poems to Life,” and “Where Poetic Craft Meets Real Life”—the essays written by British poets such as Liz Berry, Debjani Chatterjee, Clare Pollard, Roger Robinson, and Will Harris cover practical techniques as well as topics ranging from the importance of voice to power and politics in poetry. The book concludes with a coda of questions to ask while writing a poem as well as helpful writing prompts and reading suggestions. This guide to poetic craft aims to invite all writers in to the many ways poetry is created. As Dastidar writes, “This collection of essays is an attempt, not to supplant craft in poetry or overthrow it, but rather to broaden and deepen what it means in the 21st century—making it live for all poets, no matter what tradition you’re writing in and from.”  

This practical guide to writing from British-born Cypriot poet, fiction writer, and essayist Anthony Anaxagorou provides tips, anecdotes, and publishing advice for writers looking for encouragement and inspiration. Infusing memoir into the book, Anaxagorou begins with an account of his upbringing as a child of a working-class immigrant family in London to his first poetry slam win and evolving relationship with literature and the poetry scene. These personal lessons not only contextualize the passion and dedication necessary to become a writer and to keep writing, but also bring to light the joy of writing. “The act of writing, specifically poetry, opened me up to a space where I didn’t have to be certain,” writes Anaxagorou. “It was a space where anything could happen, where there was no one to judge or fail me. It was my most private and solitary world.” With approachable chapter titles such as “Learning From Failure,” “Technique and Craft,” and “You Have a Manuscript, Now What?” this guide encourages writers to overcome challenging obstacles and provoke change in and through their practice.  

“Roethke was an extraordinarily rigorous critic, and if you couldn’t take it, you didn’t learn much. For example, he said the real test was that every line of a poem should be a poem. That’s about as tough as you can get,” writes poet Carolyn Kizer about her former writing teacher and mentor in the foreword to this volume of selected prose and journal entries. Roethke, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1954 for his poetry collection The Waking, taught at various colleges and universities and was a mentor to a generation of Northwest poets that included Kizer, Tess Gallagher, Richard Hugo, and David Wagoner. Compiled from two previous volumes of Roethke’s prose notebooks, this four-part volume includes essays on identity, lessons on rhythm, the teaching of poetry, critical analyses of the works of Dylan Thomas and Louise Bogan, and advice for young writers. This rare collection of essays reintroduces Roethke to a new generation of poets seeking instruction from an acclaimed and influential poet and teacher.   

“What are the ingredients of a Latinx poetics? Is there such a thing? How do we go about it? These concerns are tackled in every essay in this most wisdom-deep and visionary collection,” writes former U.S. poet laureate Juan Felipe Herrera in the foreword to this unique anthology of personal and academic essays from Latino, Latin American, Latinx, and Luso poets on the nature of poetry and its practice. With over twenty essays from poets and scholars such as Daniel Borzutzky, Rafael Campo, Brenda Cárdenas, Raina J. León, and Tomás Q. Morín, this collection explores the ways in which history and language can influence a poet’s imagination and showcases the wide variety of voices, styles, and perspectives present in a lineage of influential Latinx poets. Covering topics including ekphrasis, lyric poetry, duende, and class consciousness in poetry, this seminal anthology expands the poetic landscape with insights on the lasting impact Latinx poets have on global literature.  

In Storyteller, the late award-winning author Kate Wilhelm compiles her memories of teaching and cofounding the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop as well as the lessons she imparted over the years to countless students, often using examples from the short stories workshopped in her classes. The book takes readers through the first days of the workshops in the late 1960s and the lessons and exercises developed over the years, then into chapters with writing exercises and advice. Ideal for anybody interested in learning the fundamentals of a good story, this mix of memoir and craft book is as much about writing as it is about the importance of good teaching and community. “It is a truism that a writer reveals the self, sometimes in full awareness, sometimes unconsciously, but that is the goal. That finally is all that any of us has to offer as writers: our own perceptions of the world, our own interpretation of our culture, our experiences in fictional terms,” writes Wilhelm.  

In this collection of meditative essays, award-winning poet Carl Phillips draws upon his decades of teaching and mentorship to create a book “not in terms of how to write or to be a writer, but in terms of how to live, as a writer.” In the preface, Phillips writes: “If writing is an ongoing quest—and I believe it is—then this book is meant as a guide for navigating the various distractions that hinder the writing (and sometimes the life), things that we’re all susceptible to, like self-doubt, a feeling of having nothing left to say, a fear that we’re somehow not doing this thing ‘correctly.’” Throughout seven succinctly titled essays, including “Ambition,” “Stamina,” and “Community,” Phillips balances personal interrogation with insights on the mysteries of creating art, guiding emerging and seasoned writers through what is arguably the most challenging aspect of being a writer: sustaining the practice across a lifetime.   

The author of the novel Indelicacy (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020) as well as two earlier collections of short fiction returns with her first nonfiction book, an essayistic meditation on writers and their work and an argument for the “essential unity of writing and life.” What started as the author’s diary of reading and writing fiction expands to include topics such as female friendships, landscape painting, book titles, and the politics of excess explored through readings of Marguerite Duras, Elena Ferrante, Renee Gladman, Virginia Woolf, and others in a paean to personal authenticity and artistic freedom. “A Horse at Night is like light from a candle in the evening: intimate, pleasurable, full of wonder,” writes novelist Ayşegül Savaş. “It asks us to consider fiction as life and life as fiction. Amina Cain is our generous, gentle guide through an exquisite library.”  

In this anthology edited by Paul Mandelbaum, each short story is accompanied by an interview with the author discussing the challenges they faced during the writing process. Each story is selected not only for its singular style but for its exemplary illustration of one of the six elements of fiction: character, plot, theme, structure, voice, and setting. Included are Ursula K. Le Guin on the Antarctic setting of her short story “Sur,” Gail Godwin on the structure of her short story “Dream Children” and her favorite ghost stories, and Allan Gurganus on the point of view and voice in his short story “Condolences to Every One of Us.” For writers of fiction and readers alike, this unique collection of short stories and interviews will shed light on both the technical and inspirational elements behind crafting great fiction.  

This second volume of The Story About the Story edited by author and essayist J. C. Hallman continues to address and exemplify the idea of a “creative criticism,” one that allows for a personal perspective when writing about reading. As Hallman writes in the introduction, the book includes “writers who think that writing about literature ought to be art itself, ought to have all of the power and sensuousness of a great piece of literature, ought to be a little bit sexy maybe, or at least feel alive.” This collection includes essays by contemporary writers on the writing of canonical authors, such as Zadie Smith on Zora Neale Hurston, Charles Baxter on Anton Chekhov, Francisco Goldman on Robert Bolaño, and Margaret Atwood on H. G. Wells. Altogether, this volume of over twenty essays offers a rare occasion for readers to not only absorb lessons on the elements of great fiction, but on what makes literary criticism great.  

“This is not a book about how to write,” says author, editor, and literary agent Betsy Lerner in this guide for writers. “I offer advice to writers whose neuroses seem to get in their way, those who sabotage their efforts, those who have met with some success but are stalled between projects.” In this book organized into two sections titled “Writing” and “Publishing,” Lerner starts with the creative side of the publishing process categorizing writers into archetypes: “The Ambivalent Writer,” “The Natural,” “The Wicked Child,” “The Self-Promoter,” and “The Neurotic.” In addressing different personalities and ways a writer might be blocked, Lerner aims to show how a writer’s style on and off the page can work in tandem. The second half of the book includes essential information on how to seek agents, handle rejection, promote your book, and understand what editors are seeking. Drawing from her experience as a writer and teacher of writing workshops as well as an editor and agent, Lerner offers an insider’s perspective on the life of a writer and ways to overcome and confront the demons that may be in the way.  

This anthology of twenty-five poems, edited by Martha Collins and Kevin Prufer, brings readers into the process and art of translating poetry into the English language. Contributors were asked to select one poem in another language, each translated into English by three different translators, and to write an essay about the challenges and rewards of translating it. The wide-format book displays the original poem and three translations side by side for readers to compare for themselves. The accompanying essays—written by working translators such as Willis Barnstone, Kareem James Abu-Zeid, Karen Emmerich, Carl Phillips, and Arthur Sze—provide an additional layer of historical context as well as discussions on word choice, tone, and other craft lessons on the art of translating poetry. Assembled in chronological order, the book features the original works of poets such as Basho, Rilke, Akhmatova, Szymborska, Amichai, and Adonis. Perfect for avid readers of poetry, translators, and writers across backgrounds, this unique anthology opens readers up to the rich possibilities within literary translation.