Best Books for Writers

Best-selling novelist Chuck Palahniuk takes readers behind the scenes of the writing life in this blend of memoir and guidebook filled with practical advice, anecdotes, and the kind of insights readers might expect from the author of Fight Club, Choke, and Haunted. In a chapter titled “Establishing Your Authority,” for example, he writes: “To create a story in which the reader never thinks to criticize the characters, kill the mother or father before the first page.” At its heart Consider This is a tribute to those who taught Palahniuk himself, including novelist Tom Spanbauer, whose unconventional writing workshop in Portland, Oregon, the author credits with having provided an essential space to improve his writing. 

Throughout this collection of twenty-seven essays, Joyce Carol Oates demonstrates a critically incisive and feminist perspective on writers such as Mary Shelley, Herman Melville, Franz Kafka, and Emily Dickinson, and topics including Mike Tyson, Winslow Homer’s paintings, her travels in Budapest, creativity, and the politics of being a woman writer. Oates’s insights will motivate writers of all levels to seek inspiration in literature, art, and observations of contemporary culture.

This book collects over two dozen essays by author, professor, and former California poet laureate Dana Gioia which present wide-ranging reflections on the evolving position of poetry in contemporary culture, and the cultural significance of poets such as Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Frost, Kenneth Rexroth, Kay Ryan, Jack Spicer, and James Tate. Gioia arrives at insightful and inspiring conclusions—and questions—concerning the definition of poetry, its unwavering value amid changes in literary culture, and the impact of both innovation and traditionalism.

Nancy Willard’s renown as a lively and versatile poet, novelist, and children’s book author is showcased in this collection of thirteen essays, which incorporate elements of parable, fantasy and folk tales, and poetry to explore the craft of writing and the role of the imagination. Willard presents readers with the magic possibilities of drawing inspiration not only from personal experiences and memories but also from ancestors and spirits, and includes examples from her own work as well as writing by Marvin Bell, e. e. cummings, Emily Dickinson, Tess Gallagher, and William Carlos Williams.

In No Plot? No Problem!, Chris Baty, founder of National Novel Writing Month, has created an engaging handbook to accompany writers through the process of writing a fifty-thousand-word novel in thirty days, from start to finish. The first half of the book is full of practical tips to prepare for the writing ahead—getting in the right mind-set, figuring out a way to schedule in writing time, advice for motivation and incentives, and planning characters and plot—while the second half provides an encouraging week-by-week guide through a month’s worth of inspired fiction writing.

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 is a workbook for the work of writing. Getting into a great space for creating, wringing out our imagination, deepening our understanding of people and therefore of characters, and having a stockpile of tools to move the work forward.” Writer and instructor Jorjeana Marie provides ten rules from the world of improvisational theater to free the imagination for the purposes of creative writing. The book includes dozens of helpful tips and is full of exercises inspired by improvisational techniques that can be performed and practiced right at the desk to jumpstart new ideas and reveal new perspectives on characterization, setting, dialogue, themes, structure, and plot.

In his previous writing guide, This Year You Write Your Novel (Little, Brown, 2007), the author of more than fifty critically acclaimed books offered the basic tools and practical advice needed to write a novel in a single year. In this conversational follow-up, Mosley breaks down the art of fiction to its essential ingredients: character and character development, plot and story, voice and narrative, context and description. Drawing on his own writing methods and supplying engaging examples from his own work, Mosley provides tips, tools, and advice for writers, from blank page to first draft to revision after revision.

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.”