Provides in-depth analysis of the life, works, career, and critical importance of John Cheever.

"From the acclaimed author of A Case of Curiosities, Allen Kurzweil's stranger-than-fiction "investigative memoir", detailing his 40-year-search for his boarding school bully who tied him up at the age of twelve and whipped him to the soundtrack of Jesus Christ Superstar, and who went on to lead a mad-cap life of international crime and financial fraud"--

The landscape of American literature was fundamentally changed when Flannery O'Connor stepped onto the scene with her first published book, Wise Blood, in 1952. Her fierce, sometimes comic novels and stories reflected the darkly funny, vibrant, and theologically sophisticated woman who wrote them. Brad Gooch brings to life O'Connor's significant friendships--with Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Hardwick, Walker Percy, and James Dickey among others--and her...

Recounts the life story of the author of the "Little House" books, from her childhood in Wisconsin to her old age at Rocky Ridge Farm.

Provides coverage on the best-known American women writers spanning from colonial days to the present, including biography, criticism, and bibliography for each; also includes lesser-known writers whose work is found in journals, letters, stories, and even hymns. Entries feature an assessment of the writer's works; basic biography and complete bibliography, as well as comprehensive data on writers' names, including pseudonyms, aliases, parents' names...

An inspirational, practical, and often lighthearted guide on how to find time to write, how to discover your personal style, and how to make sentences come alive Natalie Goldberg, author of the bestselling Writing Down the Bones, shares her invaluable insight into writing as a source of creative power, and the daily ins and outs of the writer's task. Topics include balancing mundane responsibilities with a commitment to writing; knowing when to...

In Mark Twain, Ron Powers consummates years of research with a tour de force on the life of our culture's founding father. He offers Sam Clemens as he lived, breathed, and wrote. With the assistance of the Mark Twain Project at Berkeley, he has drawn on thousands of letters and notebook entries, many only recently discovered. Sam Clemens left his frontier boyhood in Missouri for a life on the Mississippi during the golden age of steamboats. He skirted...

Seven well-known Western writers, all now in their eighties, describe their experiences growing up in the West in the early part of the twentieth century.

Contains articles on writers whose works are popular with young adults, including contemporary authors, such as Francesca Lia Block and Maya Angelou, and classic authors, such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Louisa May Alcott.