A Few Writing Resources for the Restless Writer

Crows on the Mind: A Self Portrait (2017)

I have been cutting my heart out the last year writing a memoir, that I suspect now will become a trilogy.  I have the first book written and have tucked it away as I write the second. The third is nothing more than good hope. 

Each section written, requires rest. My resting moments where I distance myself from the stories I am telling are often ones where I am reading.  In 2013 I wrote a post listing important texts that have aided me as a writer and thinker.  In this post, I update that list, citing works I recently found compelling. Here's a link to the 2013 post.

A Few Books that Help Me to Consider How Place Shapes a Person

Bachelard, Gaston. (2014). The Poetics of Space. New York: Penguin.

Basho. (1996). Back Roads to Far Towns. New York: Ecco.

Biss, Eula. (2009). Notes from No Man’s Land.  St. Paul, MN: Graywolf Press.

De Botton, Alain. (2008). The Architecture of Happiness. New York: Vintage.

Ehrlich, Gretel. (1986). The Solace of Open Spaces. New York: Penguin.

Lopez, Barry. (1989). Crossing Open  Ground. New York: Vintage.

Norris, Kathleen. (2001). Dakota: A Spiritual Geography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Oliver, Mary. (2016). Upstream: Selected Essays. New York: Penguin.

Stenger, Wallace. (1987). The American West as Living Space.  University of Michigan Press.

A Few Books That Inspire Me to Look Closely (Really this list is arbitrary.  Perhaps substitute with those texts you cannot help but put down/pick up/put down/pick up/Turn towards and away... and so on)

Currey, Mason, (2013). Daily Rituals: How Artists Work. New York: Borzoi Book.

Danticat, Edwidge. (2017). The Art Of Death: Writing the Final Story. Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf Press. 

Didion, Joan. (2006). The Year of Magical Thinking. New York: Vintage.

Doré, Garance. (2015). Love Style Life. New York: Spiegel & Grau.

Li, Yiyun. (2017). Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life. New York: Random House.

Solnit, Rebecca. (2014). The Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness. San Antonio, TXL: Trinity University Press.

A Few Books To Tune Your Ears and Call You to Play

Rushdie, Salman. (1991). Haroun and the Sea of Stories. New York: Granta Books.

A Few Books To Strengthen Your Own Art as Writer

Casey, Maud. (2018). The Art of Mystery: The Search for Questions. Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf Press. 

Clark, Roy Peter. (2008). Writing Tools: 55 Essential Strategies for Every Writer. New York: Little Brown.

Doty, Mark. (2010). The Art of Description. Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf Press. 

Gardner, John. (1979). On Moral Fiction. New York: Basic Books.

Klinkenborg, Verlyn. (2013). Several Short Sentences About Writing. New York: Vintage.

Lopate, Philip. (2013). To Show and To Tell: The Craft of Literary Nonfiction. New York: Free Press.

Maran, Meredith. (2016). Why We Write About Ourselves: Twenty Memoirists on Why TheyExpose Themselves (And Others) in the Name of Literature. New York: Plume.

Smith, Marion Roach. (2011). The Memoir Project: A Thoroughly Non-Standardized Text for Writing& Life. New York: Grand Central Publishing.

Woolf, Virginia. (1985). “A  Sketch of the Past” in Moments of Being. New york: Mariner Books.

A Few Books To Complicate Your Teaching Practices

Latta, Margharet Macintyre. (2013). Curricular Conversations: Play is the (Missing) Thing. New York: Routledge.
Newkirk, Tom. (2017). "Telling a Better Story about Writing." Embarrassment: And the Emotional Underlife of Learning. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.