Best Books for Writers

Gathering a “kit bag of rules for good writing” from his experience as a journalist, an executive in publicity and marketing, and as a spiritual coach and author, Neal Allen walks through his thirty-six rules to craft better sentences. Each rule includes examples followed by a pair of essays written by Allen and his wife, Anne Lamott, the author of several novels and nonfiction books, including the acclaimed guidebook Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. Some rules are straightforward (Use strong verbs. Don’t show off. Remove the boring stuff), while others are more provocative (Smell the roses. Give your sentence a finale. Write the hard stuff). Each rule is meant to encourage and challenge writers, and be considered as suggestions for how and what to communicate in a sentence. “This book is curious about what happens after you’ve got a sentence in mind, maybe even after you’ve finished your entire first draft,” writes Allen in the introduction. “The book embraces persuasion in its biggest sense—not to win an argument, but to be elegant; to convince a reader to continue on to the next sentence.” 

Drawing from her decades of experience as the Washington Post’s chief dance critic and senior arts reporter, Sarah L. Kaufman guides readers through the effective use of verbs and how to write with grace and clarity. The first section of the book titled “The Practical” includes a short review of grammar and lessons on how to avoid adverbs and weed out boring verbs, while the second section,“The Poetic,” goes deeper into the usage of verbs and the science behind the power of verbs. Sprinkled throughout the lessons are a range of helpful examples from news articles, works of literature, science texts, advertisements, and more. Each chapter ends with tips and quick exercises from the lessons learned in that section to help sharpen and deepen one’s writing and understanding of the dynamism of words. “Verbs ignite emotions, transform our thoughts, and stimulate our bodies,” writes Kaufman. “Verbs cue movement images in our minds, and writers who use verbs well access the reader’s imagination directly.” 

The author of three novels and two story collections, including the bestselling novel, The Last Animal (Riverhead Books, 2023), Ramona Ausubel guides writers on how to begin, get through, and finish a piece of writing in Unstuck. Dedicating the book to her students, the four sections include short chapters that walk through a problem and offer a key to a solution. Helpful writing exercises and tips end each chapter to encourage writers to keep moving forward. Ausubel poses the question: “What if instead of a slog or a sprint to the finish line, you could think of writing as a continual process of discovery?” The personal lessons and advice throughout the book aim to help writers at any stage in their writing stay excited, curious, productive, and hopeful. 

Through thirteen chapters, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Jane Smiley walks readers through her own struggles of novel-writing while exploring the history and impact of the form. In her journey to read a hundred novels, Smiley offers critique of classic novels, from Shikibu’s The Tale of the Genji to Jane Austen’s Persuasion to Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John. A mix of literary criticism and history with personal reflections, there is a love and appreciation of the craft of literary fiction throughout the book. “If to live is to progress, if you are lucky, from foolishness to wisdom, then to write novels is to broadcast the various stages of your foolishness. This was true of me,” writes Smiley. 

In this study of the work and life of Toni Morrison, novelist and scholar Namwali Serpell analyzes the Nobel laureate’s novels, as well as her lesser-known essays, plays, and poems to show the breadth of her experiments with literary form and “how her own deliberate difficulty—personal, political, and literary—defied classification…and made for brilliance.” Serpell, who teaches a course on Morrison, brings her insights and admiration of the author to the page in an approachable way to invite readers in to discover the depths of Morrison’s craft. As Serpell writes, “Morrison doesn’t condescend to your level; she challenges you to rise to hers.” 

Edited by Alyssa Raymond and Patrice Vecchione, this collection of over sixty poems by poets who come from all over the world shares the experience of first- and second-generation immigrants and refugees. With an introduction by Javier Zamora, the poems were originally published between 1984 and 2018, showing the range and pertinence of these experiences. Contributors include Elizabeth Acevedo, Samira Ahmed, Kaveh Akbar, Chen Chen, Ada Limón, Erika L. Sánchez, Gary Soto, and Ocean Vuong. Although aimed at young adult readers, the poems in this anthology can be enjoyed by any reader and exemplify the ways in which poetry can instill empathy and hope. 

Drawing on her experience as vice president of the Gernert Company literary agency and the wisdom of her star-studded list of clients, including Hanif Abdurraqib, Judy Batalion, Merve Emre, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and Clint Smith, Alia Hanna Habib walks the reader through each step of the publishing journey, from crafting an engaging book proposal and finding an agent to working with an editor and “navigating the perils of publicity.” Included in this helpful guidebook are samples of authors’ pitch letters and book proposals as well as templates for queries and even social media promotion. Incorporating the advice of lawyers, accountants, editors, publishers, publicists, and others, Take It From Me is a treasure trove of clear-eyed advice about publishing for nonfiction writers.  

In this unique craft book, Lucy Newlyn, poet and professor emeritus of English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford, guides readers through key aspects of poetry through her own original verse. Through five sections, from basic foundations (sound, line, rhythm) to techniques and forms, into more complicated concepts (tone, diction, subtext), each lesson is exemplified by a poem, without any additional explanation. In this way, the poems speak for themselves and collectively, they can be read as “explorations of nature” and a “celebratation of pastoral tradition.” As Newlyn writes in the introduction: “The Craft of Poetry sets out to build a bridge between academic and practical methods of instruction, using my own verse (freshly written for the purpose) to introduce and exemplify key poetry figures, techniques, forms, and concepts.” Writers, teachers, and fans of poetry can enjoy the more than one hundred poems included and learn something new from each of them. 

In this anthology edited by poets Annie Finch and Alexandra Oliver, a wide range of poems organized by meter are explored and celebrated. From Ovid and Sappho to Shakespeare and Milton, the Romantics, the Victorians, ballads, folk songs, poets of the Harlem Renaissance, and modern-day poets, each meter is exemplified by exceptional poems to be read aloud or absorbed in silence. Each section includes a short explanation of a type of meter, some that may be more familiar than others, such as anapests, dactyls, iambs, ballad meter, dipodics, and sapphics. “The poems in this book have been gathered with one aim in mind: to celebrate and illuminate the rhythm and music, the heartbeat and pattern, of poetry,” writes Finch in the preface.  

This anthology of essays on the work of translation offers guidance on technique and style as well as a range of perspectives on the cultural, political, and aesthetic relevance of translation. With essays from renowned writers and translators, including Clare Cavanagh, Forrest Gander, Alice Kaplan, Haruki Murakami, and José Manuel Prieto, the topics cover craft, theoretical approaches, and the challenges that affect translators working in this era of globalization. “Translation not only brings us the work of those who write in other languages; it simultaneously reveals the limits of our own language and helps us move beyond them, incorporating new words, concepts, styles, structures, and stories,” write the editors in the introduction. “Thinking about translation means thinking about the gaps in our literature and our ability to communicate, revealed by comparison with the capacities of other languages and traditions of thought.” This volume is a wonderful companion for those interested in the work of translators and the craft of literary translation. 

In this anthology that expands the boundaries of what is labeled “American,” editors Jerome Rothenberg and Javier Taboada gather pieces from all parts of the Western Hemisphere and the European and Indigenous languages within going back several millenia for an expansive collection of what they call an American “omnipoetics.” The book is divided into four chronological sections—from early Columbian times to the contemporary—and five thematic sections moving across language and geographical boundaries. The final anthology from the late Rothenberg, this book is a journey through time celebrating the freedom of poetry. “There is a need for a kind of omnipoetics that tests the range of our threatened natures wherever found and looks toward an ever-greater assemblage of words and thoughts as a singular buttress against those forces that would divide and dimmish us,” write the editors in the introduction. “It is this sense that we are attempting here an omnipoetics of the American hemisphere, as an experimental instance of what might be attempted further on a worldwide scale, toward what one of us once described as “an anthology of everything.” 

Written between 1933 and 1959, the notebooks of French novelist and philosopher Albert Camus have been published in this book as one comprehensive volume for the first time. The notebooks offer insight into his process as a writer with exploratory notes about works such as The Stranger and The Fall, as well as his thoughts on politics, his travels, health issues, frustrations, and his relationships with friends and rivals. His handwritten notebooks were likely typed by his secretary and some volumes were reviewed by Camus who “really wasn’t one for first drafts” and “liked rewriting as much as the initial writing itself,” according to biographer Olivier Todd. Expertly translated by Ryan Bloom, extensive footnotes are included to provide context for the entries. “The guiding principle throughout is the recognition that, even if Camus did edit some of his notebooks, they ultimately remain informal writings—notes and jottings and drafts—and they should, no matter the language, read as such,” writes Bloom in the introduction.