Our Ashland MFA faculty were asked to recommend books for developing writers. We're including instructional guides, anthologies, and classics of the craft, all meant to be helpful tools for your writing. Listed below are this month’s recommendations.
Creative Nonfiction
Tell It
Slant: Writing and Shaping Creative Nonfiction, by Brenda Miller and Suzanne Paola
Recommended by Robert Root
The first edition
covers process and forms, offers strategies, and has a dandy anthology. It's a
solid introductory book on nonfiction.
Poetry
The
Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry, ed. by J.D.
McClatchy
Recommended by Mark Neely
This work is a nice introduction to contemporary world poetry,
featuring a broad range of poets from five continents.
Fiction
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Recommended by Erika Krouse, E.J. Levy, and William Haywood Henderson
This work is a great study
of consciousness as the source of character and engine of drama.
Self-Help: Stories
by Lorrie Moore
Recommended by Erika Krouse, E.J. Levy, and William Haywood Henderson
This work demonstrates point-of-view wit and uses of the
ordinary and the appropriation of pop-cultural forms.