Writing

Congratulations Graduate! is a collection of 21 inspiring commencement addresses by notable achievers, including Tom Hanks, Arianna Huffington, David Sedaris, Anna Quindlen, Barbara Kingsolver, David McCullough, Anna Deavere Smith, Thomas L. Friedman, Wendell Berry, Muhammad Yunus, Kathryn Sullivan, Ian McEwan, Anne Lamott, and more! This book offers a diverse array of moving, uplifting, and wonderfully humorous commencement addresses that provide important life lessons and inspiration. Congratulations Graduate! is the perfect gift for graduates!

Writers and publishers depend on one another, but it often seems as if they speak two different languages. "Getting It Published" is a lively, insider's guide to academic publishing a book that will tell you not only how publishing works, but how you can make it work for you. Written by a veteran editor with experience in both the university press and commercial worlds, the book fields the big questions in a scholar's life. Why do editors choose some books and decline others? How does a writer decide where to submit a project? How does the review process work, and why is it necessary? What can an author expect from a publishing house before, during, and after publication? William Germano answers these questions and more, and along the way, offers encouragement, tips, and warnings.
This savvy guide unravels the mysteries of publishing and walks you through the process from start to finish. You'll learn how to think about your book before you submit it and what you need to know about your contract. With wit and humor, Germano also addresses some of the finer points of publishing etiquette, including how and how not to approach a busy editor and how to work with other publishing professionals on matters of design, marketing, and publicity. Graduate students, recent Ph.D.'s, and experienced authors alike will appreciate the chapters on "Quotations, Pictures, and Other Headaches" and on compiling and editing collections and anthologies.
"Scholarly publishing is a big, noisy, conversation about the ideas that shape our world," Germano writes, "Here's how to make your book part of that conversation.""

Each working day from January 29 to November 1, 1951, John Steinbeck warmed up to the work of writing East of Eden with a letter to the late Pascal Covici, his friend and editor at The Viking Press. It was his way, he said, of "getting my mental arm in shape to pitch a good game."

Steinbeck's letters were written on the left-hand pages of a notebook in which the facing pages would be filled with the test of East of Eden. They touched on many subjects--story arguments, trial flights of workmanship, concern for his sons.

Part autobiography, part writer's workshop, these letters offer an illuminating perspective on Steinbeck's creative process, and a fascinating glimpse of Steinbeck, the private man.

For Emma Rous, the natural environment offers countless ways to engage students in significant reading, writing, and thinking. She breaks down the barriers between school and life. She raises complex ethical questions. She creates a course of study her students care about.

With Literature and the Land, Rous not only inspires you to help students become environmentally literate, she provides the tools you need to make it happen. Beginning with readings and exercises about perception, the book explores a wealth of nature writing activities, the history of people's relationship with nature from mythological times to the present, case studies of current environmental issues and action projects, environmental themes in fiction and poetry, and the potential of outdoor adventure. The book is packed with descriptions of literature, classroom activities, student responses, and lists of resources. The materials are all designed to support a heterogeneous classroom, a student-centered pedagogy, and a gender-balanced curriculum.

Ideal for teachers looking for new ways to make the literature classroom both interdisciplinary and experiential, Literature and the Land is a one-of-a-kind reference-whether you're attempting to implement a single unit on nature literature or a full course of study.

An ambitious inquiry into the art of writing and an unprecedented insider's view of the writer's universe, from the beloved author of The Handmaid's Tale.

What do we mean when we say that someone is a writer? Is he or she an entertainer? An improver of readers' minds and morals? And who, for that matter, are these mysterious readers? In this wise and irresistibly quotable book, one of the most intelligent writers working in English addresses the riddle of her art: why people pursue it, how they view their calling, and what bargains they make with their audience, both real and imagined. To these fascinating issues Booker Prize-winner Margaret Atwood brings a candid appraisal of her own experience as well as a breadth of reading that encompasses everything from Dante to Elmore Leonard.

The Best Resource for Getting Your Fiction Published!

The 2015 Novel & Short Story Writer's Market is the only resource you'll need to get your short stories, novellas, and novels published. As with past editions, Novel & Short Story Writer's Market offers hundreds of listings for book publishers, literary agents, fiction publications, contests, and more. Each listing includes contact information, submission guidelines, and other important tips.

New to this year's edition: Gain access to the exclusive webinar "Blockbuster Fiction: Exploring Emotional High Points in Popular Films" from best-selling author Cheryl St. John. This 45-minute webinar explores the ten most popular films of 2013--including Frozen, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, and more--to show you how to create intense, emotional, engrossing moments in your fiction. When you make your readers care about your characters and your story, you'll evoke excitement, indignation, fear, anxiety, tears, and laughter--and keep them hooked from start to finish.

You'll also find articles and interviews on all aspects of the writing life, from in-depth lessons on craft and technique to helpful advice on getting published and marketing your work. The 2015 Novel & Short Story Writer's Market offers everything a fiction writer needs to achieve publishing success, including articles and essays like these:

J.T. Ellison, New York Times best-selling author, reveals how to capture - and keep - reader interest.

Ransom Riggs, mega-popular YA novelist, shares advice on writing out-of-the-ordinary fiction.

Chuck Wendig, hybrid author extraordinaire, talks about the pros and cons of traditional and self-publishing.

You'll also receive:

A free digital download of Writer's Yearbook featuring the 100 Best Markets

"If you're looking for the best resource for connecting with publishers who are hungry for your fiction, you've found it. Ten novels ago I got my start as an author using Writer's Market guides." -Steven James, writing instructor and best-selling author of The King and Story Trumps Structure

"If you can't go to every literary cocktail party in New York, get this book. It's an instant network." -Elizabeth Sims, best-selling author of You've Got a Book in You

In wide-ranging and innovative criticism, Stan Persky examines international non-fiction and fiction to engage with both the triumphs and tensions of reading and writing today. Evaluating works by established authors Philip Roth, Orhan Pamuk, J.M. Coetzee, and José Saramago, as well as emerging writers like Naomi Klein, Javier Cercas, and Chimamanda Adichie, Persky also showcases a remarkable group of reporters - Steve Coll, Dexter Filkins, and Rajiv Chandrasekaran - who have written essential books about global issues. An illuminating and accessible work about the present age, Reading the 21st Century introduces new ways of thinking about the world's most significant cultural, political, and moral problems.

For author Gish Jen, the daughter of Chinese immigrant parents, books were once an Outsiders' Guide to the Universe. But they were something more, too. Through her eclectic childhood reading, Jen stumbled onto a cultural phenomenon that would fuel her writing for decades to come: the profound difference in self-narration that underlies the gap often perceived between East and West.

Drawing on a rich array of sources, from paintings to behavioral studies to her father's striking account of his childhood in China, this accessible book not only illuminates Jen's own development and celebrated work but also explores the aesthetic and psychic roots of the independent and interdependent self-each mode of selfhood yielding a distinct way of observing, remembering, and narrating the world. The novel, Jen writes, is fundamentally a Western form that values originality, authenticity, and the truth of individual experience. By contrast, Eastern narrative emphasizes morality, cultural continuity, the everyday, the recurrent. In its progress from a moving evocation of one writer's life to a convincing delineation of the forces that have shaped our experience for millennia, "Tiger Writing" radically shifts the way we understand ourselves and our art-making.

Inside The Wicked Wit of Charles Dickens, readers take a journey into the classically humorous and almost goofy side of one of the most famous writers in world history. readers will find a timeline of Charles Dickens's Life, several short stories, a whole chapter of Dickens's bumblings, and quotes from some of Dickens's most famous papers.

Dickens was a wonderfully smart child who excelled in school but became a victim of poverty. In his later years, this childhood of poverty would influence him greatly and a great deal of his material was based on this life. When his father was sent to prison, Dickens's mother and siblings accompanied his father and went to live inside the prison in one small room while Charles was sent into lodgings beside the prison and worked at a blacking factory.

The Wicked Wit of Charles Dickenstakes Dickens's lovers through a history of some of his lesser-known stories and introduces the reader to a side of Dickens that may not have been seen before, the wickedly entertaining and funny side. The beautifully bound hardcover will look incredible resting on anyone's coffee table or bookshelf and can be considered a collectible book. Researched and compiled by Shelley Klein, this book is a must-have for any Classic Literature fan who is a current or former fan of Dickens.

Since 1984, Literary Arts has welcomed many of the world's most renowned authors and storytellers to its stage for one of the country's largest lectures series. Sold-out crowds congregate at Portland's Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall to hear these writers' discuss their work and their thoughts on the trajectory of contemporary literature and culture. In celebration of Literary Arts' thirty-year anniversary, Tin House Books has collected highlights from the series in a single volume. Whether it's Wallace Stegner exploring how we use fiction to make sense of life or Ursula K. Le Guin on where ideas come from, Margaret Atwood on the need for complex female characters or Robert Stone on morality and truth in literature, Edward P. Jones on the role of imagination in historical novels or Marilynne Robinson on the nature of beauty, these essays illuminate not just the world of letters but the world at large.

The new "nonfiction"--the adaptation of storytelling techniques to journalistic articles in the manner of Truman Capote, Tom Wolfe, and John McPhee--is an innovative genre that has been awarded virtually every Pulitzer Prize for literary journalism since 1979. And now Jon Franklin, himself a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and undisputed master of the great American nonfiction short story, shares the secrets of his success. Franklin shows how to make factual pieces come alive by applying the literary techniques of complication/resolution, flashback, foreshadowing, and pace. He illustrates his points with a close analysis and annotation of two of his most acclaimed stories, so that the reader can see, step-by-step, just how they were created. This lively, easy-to-follow guid combines readability and excitement with the best of expository prose and illuminates the techniques that beginning journalists--and more experienced ones, too--will find immensely helpful:

Stalking the true short story

Drafting an effective outline

Structuring the rough copy

Polishing like a pro

and the tips, tools, and techniques that will put your stories on the cutting edge