Best Books for Writers

“The world is abundant even in bad times; it is lush with interestingness, and always, somewhere, offering up consolation or beauty or humor or happiness, or at least the hope of future happiness,” writes guest editor Kathryn Schulz in the introduction to The Best American Essays 2021. Featuring essays by Elizabeth Alexander, Molly McCully Brown, Dawn Lundy Martin, and Wesley Morris, to name a few, this installment of the annual anthology captures writers at work during a historic year of grief and tumult. From an intimate account of nursing a loved one during the pandemic to an exploration of the political and aesthetic history of a mustache, this collection demonstrates what it is to be writing during an unprecedented time, offering readers and writers solace and inspiration through rigorous prose.  

“Like democracy, when it works, the most compelling fiction often responds to the deeper implications of world events slowly, sometimes taking years to articulate the incomprehensible, the unsaid—perhaps even the unsayable,” writes editor Lex Williford in the foreword of the second edition of this short story anthology. The first edition published in 1999 captures the world at the end of a millennium, while this 2007 edition includes voices that “have just begun to articulate the new questions arising from the first decade of this new millennium.” Featuring the work of writers such as Amy Bloom, Robert Olen Butler, Sandra Cisneros, Edward P. Jones, Jamaica Kincaid, and Leslie Marmon Silko, this excellent range of fifty stories was selected from a survey of more than five hundred English professors, short story writers, and novelists, making this an essential anthology for all readers and writers of contemporary fiction. 

“New York City is famously packed with immigrants, with stories that span the world,” writes Sofija Stefanovic in the introduction to Alien Nation: 36 True Tales of Immigration. “But being new—in New York or any other place—is complicated. Immigrant stories, like the waters Lady Liberty watches, are deep and complex.” Adapted from the live storytelling series “This Alien Nation,” created and hosted by Stefanovic, this anthology features extraordinary stories told by contributors from varying backgrounds, including authors André Aciman, Alexander Chee, and Siri Hustvedt, as well as actress Laura Gómez and activist Tatenda Ngwaru, among others. Arranged into a rich tapestry of true stories celebrating and exploring the experiences of immigrants in the United States, Alien Nation combines unique perspectives with engaging storytelling. 

The fifteenth and final volume in Graywolf’s preeminent Art of series is a long-overdue and deeply satisfying exploration of a frequently discussed yet widely misunderstood and underestimated aspect of every writer’s working life. Peter Ho Davies, the author of three novels, including A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself (Mariner Books, 2021), and two story collections, begins his careful study of revision by addressing its invisibility, with the majority of readers and writers seeing only the final draft. Davies uses examples from his own books as well as from the work of other writers, including Raymond Carver, Carmen Maria Machado, and Flannery O’Connor, to illustrate his points. By turns deeply personal and intellectually rigorous, The Art of Revision: The Last Word is a moving appeal to writers on the importance of reflecting not only on their process, but also on their lives. 

Read an excerpt from The Art of Revision here.

“If you feel left behind, this book invites you to imagine the act of writing less as a special talent and more as a purposeful craft,” writes Roy Peter Clark in the introduction of the tenth anniversary edition of Writing Tools: 55 Essential Strategies for Every Writer. “Think of writing as carpentry, and consider this book your toolbox.” Gleaned from a career as a journalist and teacher, Clark writes fifty-five short essays on ways to confront writing and its challenges, accompanying them with examples from the work of over two hundred writers, including Albert Camus, Diane Ackerman, and Amy Tan. With chapter titles such as “Fear not the long sentence,” “Give key words their space,” and “Break long projects into parts,” Clark offers practical advice to help writers reach fluency in their craft. 

“I’ve found that the more uncertain life is, the more solidity and structure War and Peace provides,” writes Yiyun Li in Tolstoy Together, which encapsulates the virtual book club the author began in 2020 inviting readers around the world to discuss Tolstoy’s epic novel with her. The book includes Li’s daily reading journal that comments on craft and technique, historical context, and character studies, as well as contributions from writers such as Garth Greenwell, Carl Phillips, and Alexandra Schwartz, among hundreds of other readers. Featuring a schedule and framework for following along, Tolstoy Together is both a guide and motivating companion that illustrates the power of reading together. 

Best Debut Short Stories 2021: The PEN American Dau Prize is an anthology published by Catapult highlighting twelve fiction writers whose outstanding debut short stories were published in a literary magazine, journal, or cultural website and selected by the award’s judges: Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Kali Fajardo-Anstine, and Beth Piatote. Ranging from speculative fiction to realist stories about immigration by writers such as Heather Aruffo, Lindsay Ferguson, Khaddafina Mbabazi, and Alberto Reyes Morgan, each piece comes with an introduction by each publication’s editor, whose insight provide a view into the selection process as well as the future of literary publishing. Now in its fifth edition, this anthology is perfect for any reader or writer seeking to be introduced to the year’s most exciting literary magazines and emerging fiction writers.

The author of eight novels, three of which were named Pulitzer Prize finalists, including Charming Billy, which won the 1988 National Book Award, McDermott turns for the first time to nonfiction in this collection of essays, lectures, and observations on the art of writing fiction. “I expect fiction to be about the pain and sweetness of life,” she writes in a chapter titled “What I Expect,” in which she shares passages by Mark Helprin, Toni Morrison, John Cheever, Philip Roth, Eudora Welty, Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, and others to illustrate the reasons we turn to fiction to learn life’s lessons. “I expect fictional narrators to stand naked, talking into the dark, so that the words they choose are neither self-conscious or self-serving nor—worse yet—author-conscious or author-serving but direct and honest and as true as they can make them.” A book as meaningful for readers of fiction as it is for writers, What About the Baby? is filled with wisdom acquired over decades of writing and teaching. 

In twelve intimate and craft-focused interviews, Christopher Hennessy probes some of contemporary poetry’s most celebrated poets, including Frank Bidart, Rafael Campo, Timothy Liu, and Carl Phillips. Each interview explores the poets’ complete work up until the book’s publication in 2005, illuminating the evolution of their work, as well as the connections between form and identity. “One may be tempted to argue that the fact that all are gay is simply a happy coincidence,” writes Hennessy in the introduction. “But to pretend that their sexuality doesn’t matter would be to squander an opportunity (one of many this book offers) to learn about how identity shapes a poet’s work, as it must.” Closing with a prescient list of emerging poets—Mark Bibbins, Randall Mann, Richard Siken, and Mark Wunderlich, among others—Outside the Lines makes the case that the lineage of gay poets is an essential one which “includes some of the most visionary, masterful writers of the past hundred years.” 

“As we have been coediting The Ecopoetry Anthology, we’ve become ever more convinced that the environmental crisis is made possible by a profound failure of the imagination,” write editors Ann Fisher-Wirth and Laura-Gray Street in the preface to this anthology compiling the works of writers—including Walt Whitman, H.D., Robert Hayden, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Elizabeth Bishop, and William Carlos Williams—responding to the “burgeoning environmental crisis.” The book begins with a history of poetry about nature, creating a lineage between eighteenth- and nineteenth-century poetry and the ecopoetics movement of the 1960s, the era in which contemporary ecopoetry bloomed. With an introduction by former U.S. poet laureate Robert Hass, this collection achieves a generous and capacious archive of living in the Anthropocene, offering a road towards hope through profound intelligence and emotional poetry. 

In twenty essays, this anthology edited by author and book critic Meredith Maran gleans the expertise of major memoirists—including Sue Monk Kidd, Cheryl Strayed, Jesmyn Ward, and Edmund White—who are dedicated to the craft of creative nonfiction. Topics range from turning oneself into an authentic character to the art behind exposing difficult personal details, and the practical obstacles that come in the way of writing. Why We Write About Ourselves is an authentic and inspiring read for anybody seeking to tell their truth. 

In this second volume of original essays from the popular New York Times column, Writers on Writing compiles advice from revered authors such as Diane Ackerman, Margaret Atwood, Frank Conroy, Mary Karr, and Amy Tan. With an introduction by Jane Smiley, this collection includes essays that range from thoughtful and serious reflections, to wry and hilarious advice, offering a glimpse into the challenges and rewards of the creative process. “How to read this book?” asks Smiley. “Read it like eavesdropping or like twisting the knob on an old radio and tuning in stations from far and wide. Read it like an explorer, then wander among the authors’ other works.”