Best Books for Writers

“The way we attend to the world changes the world we perceive, and the world we perceive changes the way we attend.” Lucy Alford shifts away from the conventional perspective of poetic form as the product of technical devices and focuses on understanding the effects of poetry through the lens of the writer’s attention, making the case that the most integral aspect of creating poetry revolves around refining relationships to attention. Alford’s close readings and analyses of work by authors, including Al-Khansā’, A. R. Ammons, Charles Bukowski, Anne Carson, Paul Celan, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Audre Lorde, Stéphane Mallarmé, Harryette Mullen, and Claudia Rankine, demonstrate the uniqueness of attention required and produced by poetry, and offers writers a fresh angle with which to approach their own work. 

Roy Peter Clark’s “writing book about writing books” collects tips culled from over fifty different guides to writing, including books by E. M. Forster, Natalie Goldberg, Donald Hall, Stephen King, Anne Lamott, John McPhee, Strunk and White, Kurt Vonnegut, and James Wood. The book has six parts for different categories of storytelling strategies, each with a concise synopsis of the tool or technique discussed (complete with explanations and anecdotes), and a list of helpful reminders for implementing the advice. 

“In addition to giving writers the information they need to feel in control of their publication journey, Before and After the Book Deal is a safe house for the publishing questions many authors are too afraid to ask,” writes author Courtney Maum. Maum tackles practical pre-book deal questions such as “Am I writing the wrong book?,” “How should I submit?,” and “What if everyone says no?,” and post-deal issues including book titles, covers, author photos, sales, reviews, events, and life after the debut. The book also includes advice from over fifty authors and publishing professionals, and offers lists of helpful references and resources. 

“Embracing a seasonal approach to your creativity can change everything, because it roots you to your own innate rhythms in a way our social media-fueled, busy-as-a-badge-of-honor culture does not,” writes Nicole Gulotta in Wild Words. Broken down into ten chapters—including “The Season of Self-Doubt,” “The Season of Listening to Your Body,” and “The Season of Finishing”—this book covers self-care rituals, personal stories, and practical routines that aid writers in embracing their craft amidst all their daily duties. Guided by an approach that “allows you the spaciousness to be exceedingly gracious with yourself,” writers can learn how to enter into a new, sustainable, and healthy relationship with their creativity. 

American Audacity, part of the Writers on Writing series, is a collection of essays examining the significant role regionalism has played in literary criticism and American literature. In the book’s three sections—Northerners, Southerners, and the Union Reconsidered—Christopher Benfey writes about authors, such as James Agee, John Dos Passos, Emma Lazarus, Edna St. Vincent Millay, William Faulkner, and Eudora Welty, and how their work is situated in the country’s literary tradition, providing an inspiring new perspective on how social identity informs an author’s work.

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 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.

The Anatomy of Story, based on lessons taught in John Truby’s acclaimed screenwriting courses, is a comprehensive guide through the process of building and shaping narrative, using elements such as dialogue, symbolism, tone, and characterization to propel the story forward. The book is full of techniques and insightful anecdotes that can be applied to writers seeking to strengthen their own fiction and nonfiction storytelling skills.