Writing Life Writers on How They Think & Work A Collection from the Washington Post Book World

Featuring a gathering of more than fifty of contemporary literature's finest voices, this volume will enchant, move, and inspire readers with its tales of The Writing Life. In it, authors divulge professional secrets: how they first discovered they were writers, how they work, how they deal with the myriad frustrations and delights a writer's life affords. Culled from ten years of the distinguished Washington Post column of the same name, The Writing Life highlights an eclectic group of luminaries who have wildly varied stories to tell, but who share this singularly beguiling career. Here are their pleasures as well as their peeves; revelations of their deepest fears; dramas of triumphs and failures; insights into the demands and rewards.

Each piece is accompanied by a brief and vivid biography of the writer by Washington Post Book World editor Marie Arana who also provides an introduction to the collection. The result is a rare view from the inside: a close examination of writers' concerns about the creative process and the place of literature in America. For anyone interested in the making of fiction and nonfiction, here is a fascinating vantage on the writer's world — an indispensable guide to the craft.

A dazzling collection of essays in which today's most celebrated writers explore their personal relationships with the literary life

Marie Arana is the editor in chief of The Washington Post Book World. A former publishing executive, she is author of a highly acclaimed memoir, American Chica. She and her husband, Jonathan Yardley, live in Washington, D.C.

On becoming a writer.The seduction of the text /Francine Du Plessix Gray --The importance of childhood /Joyce Carol Oates --Looking for the spark /Joanna Trollope --How to identify and nurture young writers /James Michener --Touched by an angel /Mary Higgins Clark --The leap from necessity to invention /John Keegan --A real-life education /Susan Minot --Emerging from under your rejection slips /Muriel Spark --Being a product of your dwelling place /Nadine Gordimer --Doing it for love /Erica Jong.