Best Books for Writers

A student of Vonnegut’s at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop from 1965 to 1967, during a time when the teacher was finishing his masterpiece Slaughterhouse-Five, McConnell guides the reader through nearly everything the famous author ever said or wrote about the art and craft of writing. “Practicing an art form is a way to grow your soul,” Vonnegut said, and with rare photographs and reproductions as well as a generous offering of the novelist’s aphorisms, short essays, articles, and speeches, Pity the Reader proves the profound truth in that statement, offering insight and inspiration on every page.

In this first of two planned volumes, Lydia Davis offers her insights, analyses, and observations on craft, art, translation, and the writing life. Sections of the book include reflections and notes on the practice of writing—forms and influences, revision, writing habits—and closer looks at the work of notable authors, such as Rae Armantrout, Lucia Berlin, Jane Bowles, Gustave Flaubert, and Thomas Pynchon. Davis also examines the work of renowned visual artists and their influence on her writing.

“As a writer, I had learned the power of releasing my control of a story, of letting the words, the characters, the images, the mysterious underpinnings of a piece of prose take me in unexpected directions.” In this slender, enlightening volume, author and professor Dinty W. Moore applies concepts from Buddhism and mindfulness studies to the practice and process of creative writing. The book presents a series of illuminating quotations by writers and artists—including Anton Chekhov, Joan Didion, Annie Dillard, Carlos Fuentes, Ursula K. Le Guin, George Saunders, and August Wilson—followed by short meditations applying the quotes to four integral components of the writing life: initial inspiration, practicalities of process, growing as a writer, and the writer’s place in today’s world.

This comprehensive primer on creative nonfiction writing, now in its second edition, is divided into two parts: “Writing Creative Nonfiction” and “Reading Creative Nonfiction.” The first ten chapters take you through essential elements of the writing process, from notebook jottings to first draft to revision, and cover important considerations such as voice, research, and ethics. The anthology portion explores different forms—memoir, personal essay, portrait, essays about place, narrative journalism, and short shorts—with exemplary writing by authors including Nora Ephron, Pico Iyer, Susan Orlean, George Orwell, Charles Simic, and Alice Walker.

This anthology collects twenty-four essays by contemporary women poets whose careers were influenced by the women who came before them. Selections include Beth Ann Fennelly on Denise Duhamel, Katy Lederer on Lyn Hejinian, Aimee Nezhukumatathil on Naomi Shihab Nye, Eleni Sikelianos on Alice Notley, and Tracy K. Smith on Lucie Brock-Broido, with poems by both the mentors and mentees following the essays. The book demonstrates the powerful, varied, and complex ways in which mentorship takes form and poetic traditions move between generations and within a community.

Curated by editors Eleanor Wilner and Maurice Manning, this book of thirty-five essays—by poets such as Tony Hoagland, Gabrielle Calvocoressi, Linda Gregerson, A. Van Jordan, Thomas Lux, and C. Dale Young—discusses the unexpected sources of poetic discovery, unique approaches to revision, and offers personal insights into the writing process. “The venture of this collection is to look, from the many vantages that the poets in this eclectic anthology chose to look, at what it was—knowing that a poem can’t be conceived in advance of its creation—that nevertheless helped their poems to emerge or connected them over time.”

“Making a sentence sing is a way of making others more likely to listen and ourselves more likely to be understood. A good sentence gives order to our thoughts and takes us out of our solitudes.” English professor Joe Moran provides a guide to the construction of effective sentences, covering integral considerations such as word order, nouns and verbs, plain words, and long sentences. With examples from the Bible and Shakespeare to Orwell and Diana Athill, and with support from scientific studies on what attracts readers, writers of all genres will find Moran’s tips and examples practical and helpful in developing their skills.

This anthology collects nearly one hundred examples of short creative nonfiction by acclaimed authors such as Andrei Codrescu, Rita Dove, Joy Harjo, Bhanu Kapil, Li-Young Lee, Barry Lopez, Naomi Shihab Nye, Michael Ondaatje, and Cynthia Ozick. Writers will be inspired by the diversity of themes, styles, and sensibilities found in the pieces—ranging from a few paragraphs to two thousand words—which demonstrate the wide scope and emotional potential of the form.

The second edition of this handbook, originally published in 1987 by the nonprofit Teachers & Writers Collaborative, guides writers through more than seventy traditional and modern poetic forms and terms including the abstract poem, the cinquain, the ghazal, the macaronic verse, the tanka, and the villanelle. Each entry contains a definition and history, a variety of exemplary passages, and helpful prompts and hints for usage.

In this book, writer, editor, and teacher William Zinsser provides the guidance and tools to excavate one’s past for the “small, self-contained incidents” that can be transformed into memoir. Zinsser draws upon the work of authors such as Annie Dillard, Mary Karr, and Henry David Thoreau, and presents personal examples from his own life to offer advice and insight into key issues of memoir writing, including how to select the best anecdotes and memories, writing about places and people, and placing trust in the creative process and one’s instincts. 

Award-winning poet and critic Stephanie Burt, who was the subject of a 2016 installment of Reviewers & Critics by Michael Taeckens, offers an accessible introduction to reading, understanding, and appreciating poetry, from Shakespeare’s sonnets to “non-book forms of poetry” shared via social media. “Don’t Read Poetry is for readers hunting sharp, nimble thinking about culture, comprehension, and poems,” writes National Book Award–winning poet Terrance Hayes. “Whether discussing an ancestral Hawai’ian language, a canonical poet like Langston Hughes, or contemporary poets like Rodrigo Toscano and Jennifer Chang, Stephanie Burt manages to illuminate ‘the difficult process of turning paired marks into words.’ Don’t read poetry, she suggests, read poems.”

The tenth edition of Janet Burroway’s classic 1982 book guides fiction writers of all levels through the entire creative process, with updated exemplary passages and advice from contemporary authors, and sections on current issues such as distraction, appropriation, different genres, and young adult fiction. Chapters focus on characterization, setting, plot and structure, point of view, and revision, and each closes with a list of suggested readings and writing prompts that allow for further study.