Best Books for Writers

This book comprises an engaging selection of interviews published in Loyola University’s New Orleans Review from 1968 to 2018. Writers of all genres will be inspired by discussions with twenty-four authors and activists—including John Ashbery, James Baldwin, Susan Bernofsky, Jorge Luis Borges, Sheila Heti, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Anaïs Nin, and Eudora Welty—who share their unique perspectives on a wide range of topics covering the aesthetic and social aspects of writing. 

It may be a cliché, but “practice makes perfect” remains a solid approach to improving one’s skills as a writer, and John Warner’s book on craft offers organic, interactive, and relevant strategies for doing just that. The author of five books, including the novel The Funny Man (Soho Press, 2011); a contributing writer for Inside Higher Ed; a columnist for the Chicago Tribune; and a writing teacher with more than twenty years of experience at the college level, Warner takes the reader step by step through the process of writing nonfiction by dissecting key concepts such as audience, tone, and revision, offering inspiring writing exercises along the way.

“We do not propose any rules; we offer observations.” In How Not to Write a Novel, Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman, both authors and editors with over thirty years of experience, guide writers through what to avoid before submitting your novel to be published. Within the broader topics of plot, character, and style, are more in-depth sections that focus on beginnings and endings, pacing, dialogue, point of view, and setting. Each chapter includes countless tips on how to identify, avoid, troubleshoot, and amend missteps to create a more effective manuscript.

“No matter how genuine you might think it sounds, your written self is an illusion, a stand-in for you. And since it’s made of words, your persona can be made to sound any way you want,” Carl H. Klaus writes in A Self Made of Words. In this guide, Klaus demonstrates how the nonfiction writer can learn to cultivate an intentional version of the “self.” Replete with examples and exercises, the book has two parts: a detailed introduction to the persona, and an overview of the most important elements in writing—including diction, point of view, and sentence structure—that play a role in crafting a distinctive self.

“Since early adolescence I have wanted to live the life of a poet,” writes Fanny Howe in the introduction of her book of essays. Her essays form a collage of recollected memories and imaginative explorations of topics including travel, language, childhood and family, historical events and figures, love and relationships, philosophy and religion—all integral components of her life as a poet. Writers will be inspired by Howe’s intensely lyrical reflections on the creative minds and thinkers who have influenced her and the questions, experiences, and forces that have propelled her work.

“When we write a personal narrative we find new meanings and, at the same time, we discover connections with our former selves. I think all writing constitutes an effort to establish our own meaningfulness, even in the midst of sadness and disappointment.” Jane Taylor McDonnell’s guide to the memoir form provides tips, strategies, and exercises that will inspire writers to excavate personal history and shape—and reshape—memories into powerful storytelling. Also included is a list of recommended reading.

“There is no such thing as being done with an artistic life. Frustrations and rewards exist at all levels on the path. Our aim here is to find the trail, establish our footing, and begin the climb.” In this twenty-fifth anniversary edition of The Artist’s Way, which includes a new introduction, Julia Cameron guides writers and artists through a twelve-week process of building and strengthening a creative life through the use of her two primary tools—the morning pages and the artist date—along with hundreds of inspiring exercises and activities.

H. K. Hummel and Stephanie Lenox introduce “writing that prioritizes brevity over page count, compression over expansion, and distillation of image and voice over development of plot and character” in this comprehensive book with helpful sections on narrative voice, time and space, sentence structure, logic, humor, revision, and other integral elements of craft specifically geared toward the short creative prose form. The guide is filled with writing exercises and prompts, and includes an anthology of over fifty exemplary short-form pieces by authors such as Matt Bell, Lydia Davis, Natalie Diaz, Amy Hempel, Jamaica Kincaid, Ada Limón, Justin Torres, and Ocean Vuong.

“This is not a book of theory. It is a book of usable solutions—how to fix writing that is flawed, how to improve writing that is good, how to create interesting writing in the first place.” In this practical and comprehensive book on writing prose, author and editor Sol Stein provides a guide through the essential concerns of craft: intentions, plotting, tension and suspense, dialogue, sensory description, revision, and more. The book covers both fiction and nonfiction, as well as overlapping elements, and is full of anecdotes and exemplary passages from other works of literature.

An acclaimed poet and critic who regularly writes reviews for the Los Angeles Times, NPR, and the New York Times Book Review, Craig Morgan Teicher assembles here a fascinating collection of essays that trace the poetic development of luminaries such as Sylvia Plath, John Ashbery, Louise Glück, W. S. Merwin, and francine j. harris, exploring how poets start out, how they learn to hear themselves, and how some of them are able to create works that stand the test of time. “I do hope,” Teicher writes, “that these investigations of various poets’ development offer other writers ways of thinking about how life and art—and how art and artists—affect one another.”

In Understanding the Essay, Patricia Foster and Jeff Porter have gathered the work of a wide range of acclaimed essayists, including James Baldwin, Joan Didion, Jamaica Kincaid, George Orwell, David Foster Wallace, and Virginia Woolf. Each writer is introduced with a contextual biography, followed by a piece by another essayist—such as Eula Biss writing about Anne Carson’s “On Trout,” Patricia Hampl writing about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Crack-Up,” and Phillip Lopate writing about William Hazlitt’s “On the Pleasure of Hating”—which offers insightful analysis of a specific essay, and refreshing perspectives on the possibilities of the form.

“By giving form to devastation, the poem rescues the reader from a darkness without shape or gravity; it is an island in a free fall; it becomes his companion in grief, his rescuer, a proof that suffering can be made somehow to yield to meaning.” Louise Glück’s second book of essays is both conversational and erudite, discussing new and emerging literary figures of American poetry and topics such as originality, narcissism, and healing. The book also includes a section with introductions to the first books of poets Ken Chen, Dana Levin, Spencer Reece, Richard Siken, and others.