The author of The Long Walk: A Story of War and the Life That Follows, forthcoming in July, talks about the work of remembering what he's already written in his head and getting it down on paper in the lastest episode of Knopf Doubleday Writers on Writing.

In a short video from earlier this year, the author of three essay collections, including his most recent, Half Empty (Doubleday, 2010), and a frequent contributor to This American Life, talks about why he writes, the nature of creativity, and why writing only gets harder. Rakoff died on Thursday night after a battle with cancer. He was forty-seven.

In this clip, author James Salter speaks about visiting France for the first time, in 1950, an experience that he wrote about in his third novel, A Sport and a Pastime, originally published by Doubleday in 1967 and recently released as an e-book by Open Road Media.

"Creating is not magic, but work. And anyone can create. Necessity is not the mother of invention. You are." In this forthcoming book from Doubleday, debut author Kevin Ashton explores humanity's greatest creations, and the seemingly unremarkable individuals, gradual steps, multiple failures, and ordinary acts behind them.

"I have a good poker face because I'm half dead inside." Colson Whitehead reads excerpts from his new book, The Noble Hustle, chronicling his experience preparing for, and then competing in, the World Series of Poker. Read Kevin Nance's interview with Whitehead—on how he met his agent Nicole Aragi—in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In this video for Mashable, Chuck Palahniuk reads an imagined kid-friendly version of his novel Fight Club (Norton, 1996). Palahniuk's debut short story collection, Make Something Up: Stories You Can't Unread, was published in May by Doubleday.