Research Essay

As the author of 24 novels, Elizabeth George is one of the most successful - and prolific - novelists today. In Mastering the Process, George offers listeners a master class in the art and science of crafting a novel. This is a subject she knows well, having taught creative writing both nationally and internationally for over 30 years. Drawing from her personal photos, early notes, character analyses, and rough drafts, George shows us every stage of how she wrote her novel Careless in Red.

“You don’t write a novel out of sheer pity any more than you blow a safe out of a vague longing to be rich”, writes Nelson Algren in his only longer work of nonfiction, adding: “A certain ruthlessness and a sense of alienation from society is as essential to creative writing as it is to armed robbery.” Nonconformity is about 20th-century America: “Never on the earth of man has he lived so tidily as here amidst such psychological disorder.” In Nonconformity, Algren identifies the essential nature of the writer’s relation to society....

Twenty of America's best-selling authors share tricks, tips, and secrets of the successful writing life. Anyone who's ever sat down to write a novel or even a story knows how exhilarating and heartbreaking writing can be. So what makes writers stick with it? In Why We Write, 20 well-known authors candidly share what keeps them going and what they love most - and least - about their vocation.

“I don’t want to be remembered for One Hundred Years of Solitude or for the Nobel Prize, but rather for my journalism,” Gabriel García Márquez said in the final years of his life. And while some of his journalistic writings have been made available over the years, this is the first volume to gather a representative selection from across the first four decades of his career - years during which he worked as a full-time, often muckraking, and controversial journalist, even as he penned the fiction that would bring him the Nobel Prize in 1982.

Throughout his 25-year journalistic career, David Carr was noted for his sharp and fearless observations, his uncanny sense of fairness and justice, and his remarkable compassion and wit. His writing was informed both by his own hardships as an addict, and his intense love of the journalist's craft. His range - from media politics to national politics, from rock-n-roll celebrities to the unknown civil servants who make our daily lives function - was broad and often timeless.

Calvin Trillin has reported serious pieces across America for The New Yorker, covered the civil rights movement in the South for Time, and written comic verse for The Nation. But one of his favorite subjects over the years—a superb fit for his unique combination of reportage and humor—has been his own professional environment: the American press.

In the 17 wide-ranging essays collected for the first time in Love and Other Ways of Dying, he brings his full literary powers to bear, pondering happiness and grief, memory and the redemptive power of human connection. In the remote Ukranian countryside, Paterniti picks apples (and faces mortality) with a real-life giant; in Nanjing, China, he confronts a distraught jumper on a suicide bridge.

Called a “chronicler of a world on the move” by The New York Review of Books, Anna Badkhen seeks what separates and binds us at a time when one in seven people has left their birthplace, while a pandemic dictates the direst season of rupture in humankind’s remembering. Her new essay collection, Bright Unbearable Reality, comprises 11 essays set on four continents—roving everywhere from Oklahoma to Azerbaijan—and united by a common thread of communion and longing.

The Uncollected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick is a companion collection to The Collected Essays, a book that proved a revelation of what, for many, had been an open secret: that Elizabeth Hardwick was one of the great American literary critics, and an extraordinary stylist in her own right. The thirty-five pieces that Alex Andriesse has gathered here-none previously featured in volumes of Hardwick's work-make it clear that her powers extended far beyond literary criticism.

Showcasing the work of literary giants like Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, and authors whom listeners may be surprised to learn were "in the life", Black Like Us is the most comprehensive collection of fiction by African American lesbian, gay, and bisexual writers ever published.

In the voices of 20 landmark memoirists - including New York Times best-selling authors Cheryl Strayed, Sue Monk Kidd, and Pat Conroy - a definitive book on the craft of autobiographical writing, indispensable for amateur and professional writers alike. For fans of Mary Karr's The Art of Memoir and Judith Barrington's Writing the Memoir, this follow-up to editor Meredith Maran's acclaimed writers' handbook, Why We Write, offers inspiration, encouragement, and pithy, practical advice for bloggers, journal-keepers, aspiring essayists, and memoirists.

International best-selling author William Stanek helps you get the edge you need. Whether we like it or not, writing is a part of our every day lives and to get by you need an edge. Enter Effective Writing for Business, College & Life: the down in the trenches writing resource you need to be successful. Use this concise guide to help you: write essays, papers, and dissertations; create reports and presentations; develop articles, stories, and novels; publish online, and CD-ROM.

Filled with empathy and wisdom, instruction and inspiration, this book encourages us to reevaluate the codes and conventions that have shaped our assumptions about how fiction should be written, and also challenges us to apply its lessons to both what we read and how we read. The start of a more inclusive conversation about storytelling, Letters to a Writer of Color will be a touchstone for aspiring and working writers and for curious readers everywhere.

Writers are witnesses and scribes to society’s conscience but writing about social issues in the twenty-first century requires a new, sharper toolkit. Craft and Conscience helps writers weave together their narrative craft, analytical and research skills, and their conscience to create prose which makes us feel the individual and collective impact of crucial issues of our time. Kavita Das guides writers to take on nuanced perspectives and embrace intentionality through a social justice lens.

Let the College Essay Guy take the stress out of writing your college admission essay. Packed with brainstorming activities, college personal statement samples, and more, this audiobook provides a clear, stress-free road map to writing your best admission essay. Writing a college admission essay doesn't have to be stressful. College counselor Ethan Sawyer (a.k.a. The College Essay Guy) will show you that there are only four (really, four!) types of college admission essays. And all you have to do to is figure out which type is best for you.

In Kneading Journalism, award-winning international journalist Tony Ganzer provides an insider's view of the Fourth Estate through compelling personal narratives and keen insights. Essays transport the listener from a bread riot before the French Revolution, to the inside of Germany’s public media and bread industries, to the streets of post-revolutionary Cairo, all while exploring the who, what, and why of journalism.

Compilation of Essays and Paragraphs for College and University Students is that rare English book that can actually help students to write coherently and logically about many topics and subjects. Compilation of Essays and Paragraphs for College and University Students has been put together and designed as a complete and a comprehensive book for helping young and adult learners in college to write and understand the structure of essays and paragraphs. This book is unique because every essay talks about something that is real in this life.

Jessica McCann has woven together a collection of personal essays and writing tips that offer a unique glimpse into her writing journey and process. She is an award-winning historical novelist and has worked as a professional freelance writer and editor for magazines, universities, corporations, and nonprofits for more than 30 years. In Words, McCann shares her passion for books as well as research that shows how reading improves our lives. With a philosophy that is equally pragmatic and optimistic, Words will appeal to readers and writers alike.

This year has seen unprecedented scrutiny of Rupert Murdoch’s empire in Britain. But what about in Australia, where he owns 70 per cent of the press? In Bad News, Robert Manne investigates Murdoch’s lead political voice here, the Australian newspaper, and how it shapes debate. Since 2002, under the editorship of Chris Mitchell, the Australian has come to see itself as judge, jury and would-be executioner of leaders and policies. Is this a dangerous case of power without responsibility?

John Schulian, a much-honored sportswriter for nearly forty years, takes us back to a time when our greatest athletes stood before us as human beings, not remote gods. In this compelling collection, Schulian paints prose portraits to remind fans of what today's cloistered stars won't share with them. The result is an audiobook guaranteed to stir memories for the generation that was - and to leave subsequent generations wishing they had it so good.