A Reading List

These are the books I have most often pressed into students’ hands. They are the books that will continue the course after the course has ended.

General Books on Craft & the Writing Life

• Annie Dillard, The Writing Life. Slim and lyrical.
• Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird. Warm, funny, the book to read when discouraged.
• Stephen King, On Writing. First half a memoir, second half craft.
• Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones. Zen-and-pencil daily practice.
• Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing. Joy and stamina.
• Brenda Ueland, If You Want to Write. 1938 and still indispensable.
• Ursula K. Le Guin, Steering the Craft. Exercises on sentence, rhythm, point of view.
• John Gardner, The Art of Fiction. Demanding, classical, brilliant.
• Verlyn Klinkenborg, Several Short Sentences About Writing. About the sentence.
• Mary Oliver, A Poetry Handbook. Useful for any writer.

On the Craft of the Short Story

• Charles Baxter, Burning Down the House. The essential American book on contemporary fiction craft.
• Charles Baxter, The Art of Subtext. Companion volume.
• Francine Prose, Reading Like a Writer.
• James Wood, How Fiction Works.
• Janet Burroway, Writing Fiction. The textbook, in a good sense.
• Robert Boswell, The Half-Known World. Brilliant essays.
• George Saunders, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. The single best contemporary book on the short story.
• Lorrie Moore, How to Become a Writer. A parable.
• Eudora Welty, The Eye of the Story.
• Flannery O’Connor, Mystery and Manners.

On the Craft of Poetry

• Mary Oliver, A Poetry Handbook. Begin here.
• Mary Oliver, Rules for the Dance. On metrical verse.
• Edward Hirsch, How to Read a Poem.
• Stephen Fry, The Ode Less Travelled. The only book on prosody you’ll finish.
• Robert Pinsky, The Sounds of Poetry.
• Tony Hoagland, Real Sofistikashun. Funny, smart, opinionated.
• Kim Addonizio & Dorianne Laux, The Poet’s Companion. Workshop in a book.
• Mark Doty, The Art of Description.
• Jane Hirshfield, Nine Gates. Wise essays.
• Helen Vendler, Poems, Poets, Poetry.

On the Craft of Memoir

• Vivian Gornick, The Situation and the Story. The essential book on memoir.
• Mary Karr, The Art of Memoir. Funny, opinionated, candid.
• Annie Dillard, To Fashion a Text.
• Phillip Lopate, ed., The Art of the Personal Essay.
• Phillip Lopate, To Show and to Tell.
• Patricia Hampl, I Could Tell You Stories.
• William Zinsser, ed., Inventing the Truth.
• Tracy Kidder & Richard Todd, Good Prose.
• Beth Kephart, Handling the Truth. A Philadelphia-area writer.
• Sven Birkerts, The Art of Time in Memoir.

On Reading & Analysis

• Mortimer J. Adler & Charles Van Doren, How to Read a Book. The 1940 classic.
• Francine Prose, Reading Like a Writer.
• Thomas C. Foster, How to Read Literature Like a Professor.
• Wendell Berry, Standing by Words.
• Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation.
• Italo Calvino, Why Read the Classics?
• Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text.
• James Wood, The Nearest Thing to Life.
• Marilynne Robinson, When I Was a Child I Read Books.

Anthologies to Live With

Buy one for each genre. Keep it where you can pick it up in five-minute increments. It is the gym membership of the writing life.

Short Fiction

• The Story and Its Writer, ed. Ann Charters.
• The Best American Short Stories, annual.
• The O. Henry Prize Stories, annual.
• The Granta Book of the American Short Story, ed. Richard Ford.

Poetry

• The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry, ed. Rita Dove.
• The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry.
• The Best American Poetry, annual.
• Good Poems, ed. Garrison Keillor.
• Staying Alive, ed. Neil Astley.

Memoir & Essay

• The Art of the Personal Essay, ed. Phillip Lopate.
• The Best American Essays, annual.
• The Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction.
• In Fact: The Best of Creative Nonfiction.