National Network for Equitable Library Service

With an introduction by Neil Gaiman! In this dazzling memoir, the acclaimed writer behind Babylon 5, Sense8, Clint Eastwood's Changeling and Marvel's Thor reveals how the power of creativity and imagination enabled him to overcome the horrors of his youth and a dysfunctional family haunted by madness, murder and a terrible secret. For four decades, J. Michael Straczynski has been one of the most successful writers in Hollywood, one of the few to forge multiple careers in movies, television and comics. Yet there's one story he's never told before: his own.

Most of What Follows Is True is an examination of the complex relationship between fact and fiction, between the "real world" and the stories we tell to explain the world to ourselves. Drawing on his own experience appropriating historical characters to fictional ends, Michael Crummey brings forward important questions about how writers use history and real-life figures to animate fictional stories. Is there a limit to the liberties a writer can take with the real world? Is there a point at which a fictionalization of history becomes a falsification of history?

Writing instructor Laura Swart gives you the tools to unlock your potential as a writer and create essays that will stand out from the rest of your class. Stop boring your profs with dull papers and get better grades!

Avec cette somme sur la nature du langage, Charles Taylor offre à ses lecteurs le livre qui était présent en arrière-plan de ses travaux précédents, notamment «Les Sources du moi» et «L’Âge séculier». En s’appuyant sur quatre décennies de réflexions et de recherches, il démontre comment, grâce au langage, l’être humain se découvre et se révèle au monde et aux autres. Au cours de sa longue histoire, la philosophie occidentale s’est divisée en deux camps à propos de la nature du langage.

Professional business writer Josh Bernoff presents the first comprehensive guide to writing for today's world: a noisy environment where everyone reads on a screen. In this practical and witty little book, you'll learn to front-load your writing with pithy titles, subject lines, and opening sentences. You'll acquire the courage and skill to purge weak and meaningless jargon, wimpy passive voice, and cowardly weasel words. And you'll get used to writing directly to the reader to make every word count.

In an age defined by hyperconnectivity and constant stimulation, Francine Prose makes a compelling case for the solitary act of reading and the great enjoyment it brings. This book includes selections culled from Prose's previous essays, reviews, and introductions, combined with new, never-before-published pieces that focus on her favorite works of fiction and nonfiction.

Joyce Carol Oates chronicles her hardscrabble childhood in rural western New York State.

Based on the Windham-Campbell Lectures, delivered annually to commemorate the awarding of the Donald Windham-Sandy M. Campbell Literature Prizes at Yale University, artist and author Patti Smith explores the nature of creative invention.

Over the course of Kurt Vonnegut's career as a writer, he sat down many times with radio host and interviewer Walter James Miller to conduct in-depth discussions of his work and the world. Now Caedmon has collected the best of these interviews on CD for the first time. This is the perfect audio collection for the Vonnegut fan who wants to understand the writer as he was, is, and will be.

On a February morning in 2008, Joyce Carol Oates drove her ailing husband, Raymond Smith, to the emergency room of the Princeton Medical Center where he was diagnosed with pneumonia. Both Joyce and Ray expected him to be released in a day or two. But in less than a week, even as Joyce was preparing for his discharge, Ray died from a virulent hospital-acquired infection, and Joyce was suddenly faced-totally unprepared-with the stunning reality of widowhood.