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Anatomy of Genres

Anatomy of Genres
$20.00

A guide to understanding the major genres of the story world by the legendary writing teacher and author of The Anatomy of Story, John Truby.

Most people think genres are simply categories on Netflix or Amazon that provide a helpful guide to making entertainment choices. Most people are wrong. Genre stories aren't just a small subset of the films, video games, TV shows, and books that people consume. They are the all-stars of the entertainment world, comprising the vast majority of popular stories worldwide. That's why businesses--movie studios, production companies, video game studios, and publishing houses--buy and sell them. Writers who want to succeed professionally must write the stories these businesses want to buy. Simply put, the storytelling game is won by mastering the structure of genres.

The Anatomy of Genres: How Story Forms Explain the Way the World Works is the legendary writing teacher John Truby's step-by-step guide to understanding and using the basic building blocks of the story world. He details the three ironclad rules of successful genre writing, and analyzes more than a dozen major genres and the essential plot events, or "beats," that define each of them. As he shows, the ability to combine these beats in the right way is what separates stories that sell from those that don't. Truby also reveals how a single story can combine elements of different genres, and how the best writers use this technique to craft unforgettable stories that stand out from the crowd.

Just as Truby's first book, The Anatomy of Story, changed the way writers develop stories, The Anatomy of Genres will enhance their quality and expand the impact they have on the world.

ISBN/SKU: 
9780374539221
0
field_in_author: 
Truby, John
Author: 
Publisher: 

Associated Press Stylebook

Associated Press Stylebook
$24.99
Master the style guidelines of news writing, editing, and common usage with this indispensable guide perfect for students and professional writers everywhere.
The style of The Associated Press is the gold standard for news writing. With the AP Stylebook in hand, you can learn how to write and edit with the clarity and professionalism for which their writers and editors are famous.

The AP Stylebook will help you master the AP's rules on grammar, spelling, punctuation, capitalization, abbreviation, word and numeral usage, and when to use "more than" instead of "over." To make navigating these specialty chapters even easier, the Stylebook includes a comprehensive index.

Fully revised and updated to keep pace with world events, common usage, and AP procedures, the AP Stylebook is the one reference that all writers, editors and students cannot afford to be without.

This edition contains more than 300 new and revised entries, including:
- A new chapter on inclusive storytelling: its importance and how to achieve it.
- Detailed guidance on writing about people with disabilities and disabled people.
- Many updates on immigration, the coronavirus, gender and race-related coverage, including the capitalization of Black and expanded use of singular they.
- A revised chapter on religion, with guidance on when Catholic rather than Roman Catholic should be used on first reference.
- A thoroughly updated chapter on using social media for reporting.

ISBN/SKU: 
9781541601659
0
field_in_author: 
Press, Associated
Author: 
Publisher: 

Comforts of the Abyss

Comforts of the Abyss
$25.95

Throughout his growth as a writer, acclaimed poet Philip Schultz has battled with the dark voice in his head--the "shitbird," as his late friend the poet Ralph Dickey termed it--that whispers his insecurities and questions his ability to create. Persona writing, a method of borrowing the voice and temperament of accomplished writers, offers him imaginative distance and perspective on his own negative inclinations.

In this candid and generous book, Schultz reflects on his early life in an immigrant neighborhood of upstate New York, his first writing experiments inspired by Ernest Hemingway and John Keats, his struggles with dyslexia, and the failures he witnessed in his father's life and his own. Through surprising, sometimes humorous, and encouraging encounters with the writers who influence him--including Elizabeth Bishop, Joan Didion, and Norman Mailer--as well as moving experiences of loss, Schultz learns how to fashion personas out of pain.

Perceptive, enlightening, and profound, Comforts of the Abyss reveals how persona writing can be used as a tool for unlocking a writer's own story, the philosophy on which Schultz founded The Writers Studio in 1987.

ISBN/SKU: 
9780393531848
0
field_in_author: 
Schultz, Philip
Author: 
Publisher: 

Crafting the Personal Essay

Crafting the Personal Essay
$17.99
Award winning essayist Scott Russell Sanders once compared the art of essay writing to the pursuit of mental rabbits--a rambling through thickets of thought in search of some brief glimmer of fuzzy truth. While some people persist in the belief that essays are stuffy and antiquated, the truth is that the personal essay is an ever-changing creative medium that provides an ideal vehicle for satisfying the human urge to document truths as we experience them and share them with others--to capture a bit of life on paper.

Crafting the Personal Essay is designed to help you explore the flexibility and power of the personal essay in your own writing. This hands-on, creativity-expanding guide will help you infuse your nonfiction with honesty, personality, and energy. You'll discover:

- An exploration of the basics of essay writing
- Ways to step back and scrutinize your experiences in order to separate out what may be fresh, powerful, surprising or fascinating to a reader
- How to move past private journaling and write for an audience
- How to write eight different types of essays including memoir, travel, humor, and nature essays among others
- Instruction for revision and strategies for getting published
Brimming with helpful examples, exercises, and sample essays, this indispensable guide will help your personal essays transcend the merely private to become powerfully universal.

ISBN/SKU: 
9781582977966
0
field_in_author: 
Moore, Dinty
Author: 
Publisher: 

Dreyer's English

Dreyer's English
$18.00
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - A sharp, funny grammar guide they'll actually want to read, from Random House's longtime copy chief and one of Twitter's leading language gurus

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY O: The Oprah Magazine - Paste - Shelf Awareness

"Essential (and delightful!)"--People

We all write, all the time: books, blogs, emails. Lots and lots of emails. And we all want to write better. Benjamin Dreyer is here to help.

As Random House's copy chief, Dreyer has upheld the standards of the legendary publisher for more than two decades. He is beloved by authors and editors alike--not to mention his followers on social media--for deconstructing the English language with playful erudition. Now he distills everything he has learned from the myriad books he has copyedited and overseen into a useful guide not just for writers but for everyone who wants to put their best prose foot forward.

As authoritative as it is amusing, Dreyer's English offers lessons on punctuation, from the underloved semicolon to the enigmatic en dash; the rules and nonrules of grammar, including why it's OK to begin a sentence with "And" or "But" and to confidently split an infinitive; and why it's best to avoid the doldrums of the Wan Intensifiers and Throat Clearers, including "very," "rather," "of course," and the dreaded "actually." Dreyer will let you know whether "alright" is all right (sometimes) and even help you brush up on your spelling--though, as he notes, "The problem with mnemonic devices is that I can never remember them."

And yes: "Only godless savages eschew the series comma."

Chockful of advice, insider wisdom, and fun facts, this book will prove to be invaluable to everyone who wants to shore up their writing skills, mandatory for people who spend their time editing and shaping other people's prose, and--perhaps best of all--an utter treat for anyone who simply revels in language.

Praise for Dreyer's English

"Playful, smart, self-conscious, and personal . . . One encounters wisdom and good sense on nearly every page of Dreyer's English."--The Wall Street Journal

"Destined to become a classic."--The Millions

"Dreyer can help you . . . with tips on punctuation and spelling. . . . Even better: He'll entertain you while he's at it."--Newsday

ISBN/SKU: 
9780812985719
0
field_in_author: 
Dreyer, Benjamin
Author: 
Publisher: 

Have You Eaten Grandma?

Have You Eaten Grandma?
$26.00
For anyone who wants to make fewer (not less) grammar mistakes, a lively, effective, and witty guide to all the ins and outs of the English language, reminiscent of the New York Times bestseller Eats, Shoots & Leaves.

Our language is changing, literary levels are declining, and our grasp of grammar is at a crisis point. From commas to colons, apostrophes to adverbs, there are countless ways we can make mistakes when writing or speaking. But do not despair! Great Britain's most popular grammar guru has created the ultimate modern manual for English speakers on both sides of the Atlantic.

In this brilliantly funny and accessible guide to proper punctuation and so much more, Gyles Brandreth explores the linguistic horrors of our times, tells us what we've been doing wrong and shows us how, in the future, we can get it right every time. Covering everything from dangling participles to transitive verbs, from age-old conundrums like "lay" vs. "lie," to the confounding influences of social media on our everyday language, Have You Eaten Grandma? is an endlessly useful and entertaining resource for all.

ISBN/SKU: 
9781982127404
0
field_in_author: 
Brandreth, Gyles
Author: 
Publisher: 

Howdunit

Howdunit
$18.99
Winner of the H.R.F. Keating Award for best biographical/critical book related to crime fiction, and nominated for the Edgar Allen Poe and Macavity Awards for Best Critical/Biographical book.

Ninety crime writers from the world's oldest and most famous crime writing network give tips and insights into successful crime and thriller fiction.

Howdunit offers a fresh perspective on the craft of crime writing from leading exponents of the genre, past and present. The book offers invaluable advice to people interested in writing crime fiction, but it also provides a fascinating picture of the way that the best crime writers have honed their skills over the years. Its unique construction and content mean that it will appeal not only to would-be writers but also to a very wide readership of crime fans.

The principal contributors are current members of the legendary Detection Club, including Ian Rankin, Val McDermid, Peter James, Peter Robinson, Ann Cleeves, Andrew Taylor, Elly Griffiths, Sophie Hannah, Stella Duffy, Alexander McCall Smith, John Le Carré and many more.

Interwoven with their contributions are shorter pieces by past Detection Club members ranging from G.K. Chesterton, Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie and John Dickson Carr to Desmond Bagley and H.R.F. Keating.

The book is dedicated to Len Deighton, who is celebrating 50 years as a Detection Club member and has also penned an essay for the book.

The contributions are linked by short sections written by Martin Edwards, the current President of the Club and author of the award-winning The Golden Age of Murder.

ISBN/SKU: 
9780008380168
0
field_in_author: 
Edwards, Martin
Publisher: 

I Came All This Way to Meet You: Writing Myself Home

I Came All This Way to Meet You: Writing Myself Home
$17.99

Named a Best Book of the Year by: Time * New Yorker * Sunday Times (UK)

From New York Times bestselling author Jami Attenberg comes a dazzling memoir about unlocking and embracing her creativity--and how it saved her life.

In this brilliant, fierce, and funny memoir of transformation, Jami Attenberg--described as a "master of modern fiction" (Entertainment Weekly) and the "poet laureate of difficult families" (Kirkus Reviews)--reveals the defining moments that pushed her to create a life, and voice, she could claim for herself. What does it take to devote oneself to art? What does it mean to own one's ideas? What does the world look like for a woman moving solo through it?

As the daughter of a traveling salesman in the Midwest, Attenberg was drawn to a life on the road. Frustrated by quotidian jobs and hungry for inspiration and fresh experiences, her wanderlust led her across the country and eventually on travels around the globe. Through it all she grapples with questions of mortality, otherworldliness, and what we leave behind.

It is during these adventures that she begins to reflect on the experiences of her youth--the trauma, the challenges, the risks she has taken. Driving across America on self-funded book tours, sometimes crashing on couches when she was broke, she keeps writing: in researching articles for magazines, jotting down ideas for novels, and refining her craft, she grows as an artist and increasingly learns to trust her gut and, ultimately, herself.

Exploring themes of friendship, independence, class, and drive, I Came All This Way to Meet You is an inspiring story of finding one's way home--emotionally, artistically, and physically--and an examination of art and individuality that will resonate with anyone determined to listen to their own creative calling.

ISBN/SKU: 
9780063039803
0
field_in_author: 
Attenberg, Jami
Author: 
Publisher: 

I Came All This Way to Meet You: Writing Myself Home

I Came All This Way to Meet You: Writing Myself Home
$27.99

A Most Anticipated Title from: USA Today * The Guardian * Alma * Fodor's * AV Club * Vogue * KatieCouric.com * BookRiot * Lithub * BuzzFeed

A New Yorker Best Book of 2022

From New York Times bestselling author Jami Attenberg comes a dazzling memoir about unlocking and embracing her creativity--and how it saved her life.

In this brilliant, fierce, and funny memoir of transformation, Jami Attenberg--described as a "master of modern fiction" (Entertainment Weekly) and the "poet laureate of difficult families" (Kirkus Reviews)--reveals the defining moments that pushed her to create a life, and voice, she could claim for herself. What does it take to devote oneself to art? What does it mean to own one's ideas? What does the world look like for a woman moving solo through it?

As the daughter of a traveling salesman in the Midwest, Attenberg was drawn to a life on the road. Frustrated by quotidian jobs and hungry for inspiration and fresh experiences, her wanderlust led her across the country and eventually on travels around the globe. Through it all she grapples with questions of mortality, otherworldliness, and what we leave behind.

It is during these adventures that she begins to reflect on the experiences of her youth--the trauma, the challenges, the risks she has taken. Driving across America on self-funded book tours, sometimes crashing on couches when she was broke, she keeps writing: in researching articles for magazines, jotting down ideas for novels, and refining her craft, she grows as an artist and increasingly learns to trust her gut and, ultimately, herself.

Exploring themes of friendship, independence, class, and drive, I Came All This Way to Meet You is an inspiring story of finding one's way home--emotionally, artistically, and physically--and an examination of art and individuality that will resonate with anyone determined to listen to their own creative calling.

ISBN/SKU: 
9780063039797
0
field_in_author: 
Attenberg, Jami
Author: 
Publisher: 

In the Margins: On the Pleasures of Reading and Writing

In the Margins: On the Pleasures of Reading and Writing
$20.00

A NATIONAL INDIE BESTSELLER
A BEST BOOK OF 2022 (Air Mail)


Four new and revelatory essays by the author of My Brilliant Friend and The Lost Daughter.


In 2020, Claire Luchette in O, The Oprah Magazine described the beloved Italian novelist Elena Ferrante as "an oracle among authors." Here, in these four crisp essays, Ferrante offers a rare look at the origins of her literary powers. She writes about her influences, her struggles, and her formation as both a reader and a writer; she describes the perils of "bad language" and suggests ways in which it has long excluded women's truth; she proposes a choral fusion of feminine talent as she brilliantly discourses on the work of Emily Dickinson, Gertrude Stein, Ingeborg Bachmann, and many others.


Here is a subtle yet candid book by "one of the great novelists of our time" about adventures in literature, both in and out of the margins.


"Everyone should read everything with Elena Ferrante's name on it."--The Boston Globe


ISBN/SKU: 
9781609457372
0
field_in_author: 
Ferrante, Elena
Author: 
Publisher: 

Life of Crime: Detecting the History of Mysteries and Their Creators

Life of Crime: Detecting the History of Mysteries and Their Creators
$32.99

In the first major history of crime fiction in fifty years, The Life of Crime: Detecting the History of Mysteries and their Creators traces the evolution of the genre from the eighteenth century to the present, offering brand-new perspective on the world's most popular form of fiction.

Author Martin Edwards is a multi-award-winning crime novelist, the President of the Detection Club, archivist of the Crime Writers' Association and series consultant to the British Library's highly successful series of crime classics, and therefore uniquely qualified to write this book. He has been a widely respected genre commentator for more than thirty years, winning the CWA Diamond Dagger for making a significant contribution to crime writing in 2020, when he also compiled and published Howdunit: A Masterclass in Crime Writing by Members of the Detection Club and the novel Mortmain Hall. His critically acclaimed The Golden Age of Murder (Collins Crime Club, 2015) was a landmark study of Detective Fiction between the wars.

The Life of Crime is the result of a lifetime of reading and enjoying all types of crime fiction, old and new, from around the world. In what will surely be regarded as his magnum opus, Martin Edwards has thrown himself undaunted into the breadth and complexity of the genre to write an authoritative - and readable - study of its development and evolution. With crime fiction being read more widely than ever around the world, and with individual authors increasingly the subject of extensive academic study, his expert distillation of more than two centuries of extraordinary books and authors - from the tales of E.T.A. Hoffmann to the novels of Patricia Cornwell - into one coherent history is an extraordinary feat and makes for compelling reading.

ISBN/SKU: 
9780008192426
0
field_in_author: 
Edwards, Martin
Author: 
Publisher: 

Murder Your Darlings

Murder Your Darlings
$17.99
From one of America's most influential teachers, a collection of the best writing advice distilled from fifty language books -- from Aristotle to Strunk and White.

With so many excellent writing guides lining bookstore shelves, it can be hard to know where to look for the best advice. Should you go with Natalie Goldberg or Anne Lamott? Maybe William Zinsser or Stephen King would be more appropriate. Then again, what about the classics -- Strunk and White, or even Aristotle himself?

Thankfully, your search is over. In Murder Your Darlings, Roy Peter Clark, who has been a beloved and revered writing teacher to children and Pulitzer Prize winners alike for more than thirty years, has compiled a remarkable collection of more than 100 of the best writing tips from fifty of the best writing books of all time.

With a chapter devoted to each key strategy, Clark expands and contextualizes the original author's suggestions and offers anecdotes about how each one helped him or other writers sharpen their skills. An invaluable resource for writers of all kinds, Murder Your Darlings is an inspiring and edifying ode to the craft of writing.

ISBN/SKU: 
9780316481878
0
field_in_author: 
Clark, Roy Peter
Author: 
Publisher: 

Nine Nasty Words: English in the Gutter: Then, Now, and Forever

Nine Nasty Words: English in the Gutter: Then, Now, and Forever
$24.00
A New York Times bestseller

One of the preeminent linguists of our time examines the realms of language that are considered shocking and taboo in order to understand what imbues curse words with such power--and why we love them so much.

Profanity has always been a deliciously vibrant part of our lexicon, an integral part of being human. In fact, our ability to curse comes from a different part of the brain than other parts of speech--the urgency with which we say f&*k! is instead related to the instinct that tells us to flee from danger.

Language evolves with time, and so does what we consider profane or unspeakable. Nine Nasty Words is a rollicking examination of profanity, explored from every angle: historical, sociological, political, linguistic. In a particularly coarse moment, when the public discourse is shaped in part by once-shocking words, nothing could be timelier.

ISBN/SKU: 
9780593188798
0
field_in_author: 
McWhorter, John
Author: 
Publisher: 

No Plot? No Problem! Revised and Expanded Edition

No Plot? No Problem! Revised and Expanded Edition
$14.95
Chris Baty, founder of the wildly successful literary marathon known as National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), has completely revised and expanded his definitive handbook for extreme noveling. Chris pulls from over 15 years of results-oriented writing experience to pack this compendium with new tips and tricks, ranging from week-by-week quick reference guides to encouraging advice from authors, and much more. His motivating mix of fearless optimism and practical solutions to common excuses gives both first-time novelists and results-oriented writers the kick-start they need to embark on an exhilarating creative adventure.
ISBN/SKU: 
9781452124773
0
field_in_author: 
Baty, Chris
Author: 
Publisher: 

Novelist as a Vocation

Novelist as a Vocation
$28.00
NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER - An insightful look into the mind of a master storyteller--and a unique look at the craft of writing from the beloved and best-selling author of 1Q84, Norwegian Wood, and What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.

"Murakami is like a magician who explains what he's doing as he performs the trick and still makes you believe he has supernatural powers" --New York Times Book Review

A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK: Esquire, Vulture, LitHub, New York Observer

Aspiring writers and readers who have long wondered where the mysterious novelist gets his ideas and what inspires his strangely surreal worlds will be fascinated by this engaging book from the internationally best-selling author. Haruki Murakami now shares with readers his thoughts on the role of the novel in our society; his own origins as a writer; and his musings on the sparks of creativity that inspire other writers, artists, and musicians.

Here are the personal details of a life devoted to craft: the initial moment at a Yakult Swallows baseball game, when he suddenly knew he could write a novel; the importance of memory, what he calls a writer's "mental chest of drawers"; the necessity of loneliness, patience, and his daily running routine; the seminal role a carrier pigeon played in his career and more.

"What I want to say is that in a certain sense, while the novelist is creating a novel, he is simultaneously being created by the novel as well." --Haruki Murakami

ISBN/SKU: 
9780451494641
0
field_in_author: 
Murakami, Haruki
Author: 
Publisher: 

On Writing (and Writers)

On Writing (and Writers)
$23.99

"While writing about writing is often deadly, Lewis is as delightful as he is wise." --The New York Times

A definitive collection of wisdom on every style of writing and a celebration of the transformative power of the written word from one of the most influential writers and thinkers of the modern age, C. S. Lewis, the beloved author of the Chronicles of Narnia series, Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, and other revered classics.

Featuring over one hundred excerpts--some short and some essay length--drawn from his wide body of letters, books, and essays, On Writing (and Writers) brings together C. S. Lewis's reflections on the power, importance, and joy of a life dedicated to writing.

Writers and devoted readers will be enriched and inspired by Lewis's commentary on a range of genres, including:

On Good WritingOn Writing FictionOn Writing PoetryOn Writing for ChildrenOn Writing Science FictionOn Christian WritingOn Writing PersuasivelyOn Other Writers

Wise and practical, On Writing (and Writers) reveals Lewis's thoughts on both mechanics and style, including choosing adjectives, the art of expression, how to connect with readers, and the core principles of clear, impactful writing.

A window into the mind of one of the greatest public intellectuals of the twentieth century--a gifted writer whose influence and insights remain relevant six decades after his death--this engaging collection reveals not only why Lewis loved the written word, but what it means to "gladly teach" the art of writing, so that wise readers can "gladly learn."

ISBN/SKU: 
9780063276444
0
field_in_author: 
Lewis, C. S.
Author: 
Publisher: 

Refuse to Be Done: How to Write and Rewrite a Novel in Three Drafts

Refuse to Be Done: How to Write and Rewrite a Novel in Three Drafts
$15.95
They say writing is rewriting. So why does the second part get such short shrift? Refuse To Be Done will guide you through every step of the novel writing process, from getting started on those first pages to the last tips for making your final draft even tighter and stronger.

From lauded writer and teacher Matt Bell, Refuse to Be Done is encouraging and intensely practical, focusing always on specific rewriting tasks, techniques, and activities for every stage of the process. You won't find bromides here about the "the writing Muse." Instead, Bell breaks down the writing process in three sections. In the first, Bell shares a bounty of tactics, all meant to push you through the initial conception and get words on the page. The second focuses on reworking the narrative through outlining, modeling, and rewriting. The third and final section offers a layered approach to polishing through a checklist of operations, breaking the daunting project of final revisions into many small, achievable tasks.

Whether you are a first time novelist or a veteran writer, you will find an abundance of strategies here to help motivate you and shake up your revision process, allowing you to approach your work, day after day and month after month, with fresh eyes and sharp new tools.

ISBN/SKU: 
9781641293419
0
field_in_author: 
Bell, Matt
Author: 
Publisher: 

ROOMS WOMEN, WRITING, WOOLF

ROOMS WOMEN, WRITING, WOOLF
$17.95

From LAMBDA Literary Award winner Sina Queyras, Rooms offers a peek into the defining spaces a young queer writer moved through as they found their way from a life of chaos to a life of the mind


Thirty years ago, a professor threw a chair at Sina Queyras after they'd turned in an essay on Virginia Woolf.


Queyras returns to that contentious first encounter with Virginia Woolf to recover the body and thinking of that time. Using Woolf's A Room of One's Own as a touchstone, this book is both an homage to and provocation of the idea of a room of one's own at the centre of our idea of a literary life.


How central is the room? And what happens once we get one? Do we inhabit our rooms? Or do the rooms contain us? Blending memoir, prose, tweets, poetry, and criticism, Rooms offers a peek into the defining spaces a young queer writer moved through as they found their way from a life of chaos to a life of the mind, and from a very private life of the mind to a public life of the page, and from a life of the page into a life in the Academy, the Internet, and on social media.


"With Virginia Woolf alongside them, Queyras journeys through rooms literal and figurative, complicating and deepening our understanding of what it means to create space for oneself as a writer. Their hard-won language challenges us to resist any glib associations of Woolf's famous 'room' with an easy freedom. Inspiring and moving, Queyras's memoir testifies to Woolf's continuing generative power."--Mark Hussey, editor of Virginia Woolf's Between the Acts (2011) and author of Clive Bell and the Making of Modernism (2021)

"In this beautiful, perceptive book, Sina Queyras moves deftly between the words and wake of Virginia Woolf and their own formation as writer, lover, teacher, friend, and person. Rooms is expert in its depiction of personal and literary histories, and firmly aware of its moment of composition. Reading these pages, I was enticed by Queyras's curiosity and openness, thrilled by the sharp edges of their anger. Tight prose, electric thinking, self-discovery - it's all here, all abuzz. Rooms is alive." - Heather Christle, author of The Crying Book

"It is impossible not to question the world as we thought we knew it by the end of this book. Sina Queyras painstakingly aims their extraordinary nerve and talent at Virginia Woolf's idea of a room of one's own: 'It's a mistake to consider the room without all of its entanglements.' Taking Woolf's cue, Queyras explores writing that is not world-building but something far more generous and transformative; as Woolf wrote, 'Literature is open to everybody.'" - CAConrad, author of AMANDA PARADISE: Resurrect Extinct Vibration





ISBN/SKU: 
9781552454336
0
field_in_author: 
QUEYRAS, SINA
Author: 
Publisher: 

Seek After

Seek After
$20.00
The poems of John Keats, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, Gwendolyn Brooks and W. S. Merwin are carefully studied and cleverly defined in Seek After: On Seven Modern Lyric Poets. David Baker meticulously curated twenty-three essays that explores the verses of these poets, where at times an author goes in depth on the form of the poem: Carl Phillips writes the technique of using an ellipsis shows "Stevens seems to want to emphasize the break, the breach between the figurative world we've just left and the literal one we've been abandoned to." Baker states that "we tend to overlook Moore's exceptions and substitutions" in her unconventional syllabics. In addition to the "polyvocal, fragmentary, and overtly sociopolitical in nature" prose of Brooks, Meghan O' Rourke claims "to read "Riot" is to have to ask why it ends with an invocation of individual and--crucially--erotic renewal." Rosanna Warren notes "the conventional lyric preoccupation with time passing, then, translates for Merwin into the particular grief of time running out for many species of plants and animals, and perhaps for the earth itself."

The influential poets of today's literature show that these nineteenth-and twentieth-century poets paved the way for contemporary poetry. Linda Gregerson asserts that "Walt Whitman did change forever the possibilities of American poetic speech: he enabled American poetry to leap quite over the Victoriana that so beautifully elaborated, and stultified, English lyric production," and Ann Townsend believes that "Emily Dickinson's poems do not live apart from the world; they are the world." Seek After requests that the reader searches for the ability to find what "a whole life is," as Rosanna Warren says, once they have finished this insightful collection of essays.

ISBN/SKU: 
9781622881888
0
field_in_author: 
Baker, David

Semicolon: The Past, Present, and Future of a Misunderstood Mark

Semicolon: The Past, Present, and Future of a Misunderstood Mark
$16.99

"Delightful." --Mary Norris, The New Yorker

A page-turning, existential romp through the life and times of the world's most polarizing punctuation mark

The semicolon. Stephen King, Hemingway, Vonnegut, and Orwell detest it. Herman Melville, Henry James, and Rebecca Solnit love it. But why? When is it effective? Have we been misusing it? Should we even care?

In Semicolon, Cecelia Watson charts the rise and fall of this infamous punctuation mark, which for years was the trendiest one in the world of letters. But in the nineteenth century, as grammar books became all the rage, the rules of how we use language became both stricter and more confusing, with the semicolon a prime victim. Taking us on a breezy journey through a range of examples--from Milton's manuscripts to Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letters from Birmingham Jail" to Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep--Watson reveals how traditional grammar rules make us less successful at communicating with each other than we'd think. Even the most die-hard grammar fanatics would be better served by tossing the rule books and learning a better way to engage with language.

Through her rollicking biography of the semicolon, Watson writes a guide to grammar that explains why we don't need guides at all, and refocuses our attention on the deepest, most primary value of language: true communication.

ISBN/SKU: 
9780062853066
0
field_in_author: 
Watson, Cecelia
Author: 
Publisher: 

Story Cure: A Book Doctor's Pain-Free Guide to Finishing Your Novel or Memoir

Story Cure: A Book Doctor's Pain-Free Guide to Finishing Your Novel or Memoir
$15.99
A collection of cures for writer's block, plotting and characterization issues, and other ailments writers face when completing a novel or memoir, prescribed by the director of creative writing at Ohio University.

People want to write the book they know is inside of them, but they run into stumbling blocks that trouble everyone from beginners to seasoned writers. Drawing on his years of teaching at both the university level and at writing workshops across the country, Professor Dinty W. Moore dons his book-doctor hat to present an authoritative guide to curing the issues that truly plague writers at
all levels. His hard-hitting handbook provides inspiring solutions for diagnoses such as character anemia, flat plot, and silent voice, and is peppered with flashes of Moore's signature wit and unique take on the writing life.

ISBN/SKU: 
9780399578809
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field_in_author: 
Moore, Dinty W
Author: 
Publisher: 

Tell It Like It Is

Tell It Like It Is
$27.00
America's favorite writing coach and bestselling author returns with an "indispensable" guide (Diana K. Sugg, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter) to writing clearly and honestly in a world full of lies, propaganda, and misinformation.

The darker and more dystopian the future appears, the more influential public writers become. But with so much content vying for our attention, and so much misinformation and propaganda polluting public discourse, how can writers break through the noise to inform an increasingly busy, stressed, and overwhelmed audience?

In Tell It Like It Is, bestselling author, writing coach, and teacher Roy Peter Clark offers a succinct and practical guide to writing with clarity, honesty, and conviction. By analyzing stellar writing samples from a diverse collection of public writers, Clark highlights and explains the tools journalists, scientists, economists, fact-checkers, even storytellers use to engage, inform, and hook readers, and how best to deploy them in a variety of contexts. In doing so, he provides answers to some of the most pressing questions facing writers today:

  • How do I make hard facts--about pandemics, wars, natural disasters, social justice--easy reading?
  • How do I get readers to pay attention to what they need to know?
  • How do I help contribute to a culture of writing that combats misinformation and propaganda?
  • How do I instill hope into the hearts and minds of readers?

  • With Clark's trademark wit, insight, and compassion, Tell It Like It Is offers a uniquely practical and engaging guide to public writing in unprecedented times--and an urgently needed remedy for a dangerously confused world.

    ISBN/SKU: 
    9780316317139
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    field_in_author: 
    Clark, Roy Peter
    Author: 
    Publisher: 

    Write for Your Life

    Write for Your Life
    $28.95

    How would you create a winning pitch for your latest investment idea? Or persuasively argue for a major policy change? Or successfully ask your boss for a raise? The answer: clear and effective communication, whether in writing or through a presentation.

    Best-selling author Charles Wheelan has spent decades mastering effective communication skills in his work as a writer, college professor, journalist, speechwriter, political candidate, and public speaker. In Write for Your Life, he shares his best tips. Taking readers through all the steps required to arrive at a coherent first draft, he then explains the best ways to improve and fine-tune your writing. He covers how to organize and present information, why it's necessary to adapt your tone to different audiences, and when to use summaries, sidebars, bullet points, and other tools for making information more digestible. He explores the truth behind popular clichés like Show, don't tell and Kill your darlings, and discusses the proper use and attribution of quotations from secondary sources. And he goes on to cover how to speak effectively, providing helpful advice for preparing a winning presentation or delivering a speech.

    Writing with his signature wit and humor, Wheelan illustrates his points with entertaining examples from his own life, as well as memorable anecdotes from leading magazine and newspaper writers, political figures from Winston Churchill to Barack Obama and Elena Kagan, and a diverse array of the best communicators from the worlds of culture, sports, and politics. Write for Your Life is an essential guide for anyone needing to get their ideas across whether in an email, memo, report, presentation, fund-raising letter, or speech.

    ISBN/SKU: 
    9780393633979
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    field_in_author: 
    Wheelan, Charles
    Author: 
    Publisher: 

    Write for Your Life

    Write for Your Life
    $26.00
    NATIONAL BESTSELLER - In this clarion call to pick up a pen and find yourself from "one of our most astute chroniclers of modern life" (The New York Times Book Review), #1 New York Times bestselling author Anna Quindlen shows us how anyone can write, and why everyone should.

    What really matters in life? What truly lasts in our hearts and minds? Where can we find community, history, humanity? In this lyrical new book, the answer is clear: through writing. This is a book for what Quindlen calls "civilians," those who want to use the written word to become more human, more themselves.

    Write for Your Life argues that there has never been a more important time to stop and record what we are thinking and feeling. Using examples from past, present, and future--from Anne Frank to Toni Morrison, from love letters written after World War II to journal reflections from nurses and doctors today--Write for Your Life vividly illuminates the ways in which writing connects us to ourselves and to those we cherish. Drawing on her personal experiences not just as a writer but as a mother and daughter, Quindlen makes the case that recording our daily lives in writing is essential.

    When we write we not only look, we see; we not only react but reflect. Writing gives you something to hold onto in a changing world. "To write the present," Quindlen says, "is to believe in the future."

    ISBN/SKU: 
    9780593229835
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    field_in_author: 
    Quindlen, Anna
    Author: 
    Publisher: