Writing

Are you an author? Do you have a new book that you're looking to promote to potential new fans? Have you considered venturing out into the book signing circuit? Maybe you've thought about it for a while but haven't been sure how to go about it. Perhaps you're reluctant because you don't know what to expect. Book Signing 101: An Author's Guide gives you a simple and straightforward breakdown of everything involved in book signing events, from where to hold your event, what to have with you, what to avoid, how to save money, how to carry yourself like a professional author and much more.

Now available in paperback, From Battlefields Rising explores the profound impact of the war on writers including Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Emily Dickinson, and Frederick Douglass. As the writers of the time grappled with the war's impact on the individual and the national psyche, their responses multiplied and transmuted. Whitman's poetry and prose, for example, was chastened and deepened by his years spent ministering to wounded soldiers; off the battlefield, the anguish of war would come to suffuse the austere, elliptical poems that Emily Dickinson was writing from afar; and Hawthorne was rendered silent by his reading of military reports and talks with soldiers. Calling into question every prior presumption and ideal, the war forever changed America's early idealism-and consequently its literature-into something far more ambivalent and raw.

An absorbing group portrait of the period's most important writers, From Battlefields Rising flashes with forgotten historical details and elegant new ideas. It alters previous perceptions about the evolution of American literature and how Americans have understood and expressed their common history.

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.

The fifth edition of the MLA Handbook is revamped for the Internet age. A complete toolbox for online research, this edition offers guidance in
-- finding research materials online
-- judging the quality of information on the Internet
-- using expanded and updated MLA formats to document a wide variety of online sources
-- preparing texts in electronic form

The MLA Handbook's authoritative guidelines on research practices and MLA style are enhanced in other ways. New topics have been added, and citation examples, the list of suggested writing guides, and the appendix of reference works by field have been expanded and updated.

The fifth edition serves as both a classroom text and a reference book for students and writers to use independently. Teachers and students of writing, literature, languages, philosophy, and other humanities fields will find this guide indispensable.

When we open the gates to nonfiction inquiry, we open our thinking and expect the unexpected, making reading discoveries, research discoveries, and writing discoveries on our way. Nonfiction Matters offers teachers the tools to help students explore nonfiction and dig deep to reach more complete understanding of the real world and report these insights in a compelling manner.

Stephanie Harvey shows how students can read expository text, engage in research, and write authentic nonfiction that is captivating, visual, and full of voice. The inquiry projects she describes require in-depth learning: topic selection, question development, research exploration, reading for content, organization, synthesis, writing to convey meaning, and presenting findings--all skills that develop independent thinkers who know how to make decisions, solve problems, and apply their knowledge insightfully.

Full of practical suggestions to help you bring nonfiction into your curriculum, Nonfiction Matters: presents strategies for understanding expository text and conducting meaningful research;offers ideas for organizing and writing accurate, effective nonfiction from idea to finished presentation;advances the importance of teacher modeling and guided practice in instructional delivery;provides a list of inquiry tools and resources--both print and electronic;suggests ways to facilitate project-based learning and assess the projects as they develop;includes bibliographies of nonfiction children's books by subject and genre and lists of recommended magazines.

Why is nonfiction almost a guaranteed success? The key to teaching with nonfiction is passion, for children are passionate inquirers, and nonfiction fuels their curiosity and their demand for knowledge and understanding of the world.

Remarkably accessible and unfailingly stimulating, this collection exhibits the diversity of interests and the depth of knowledge that have made Eco one of the world's leading writers.

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.