A Closer Look

The Writers and Their Essays ANDRE ACIMAN Aciman on Writing: "A Literary Pilgrim Progresses to the Past" "The Capital of Memory" "A Late Lunch" "Shadow Cities" RICK BASS Bass on Writing: "Without Safety: Writing Nonfiction" "On Willow Creek" "Why I Hunt: A Predator's Meditation" "Thunder and Lightning" JOAN DIDION Didion on Writing: "Why I Write" "The Women's Movement" "In Bogota" "Girl of the Golden West" ANNIE DILLARD Dillard on Writing: from The Writing Life, Chapter One "Total Eclipse" "Teaching a Stone to Talk" "Spring" BARBARA EHRENREICH Ehrenreich on Writing: "Introduction" "Stamping Out a Dread Scourge" "Premature Pragmatism" "Oh, Those Family Values" JOSEPH EPSTEIN Epstein on Writing: "Compose Yourself" "A Mere Journalist" "The Art of the Nap" "Penography" HENRY LOUIS GATES, JR. Gates on Writing: "Writing, 'Race,' and the Difference It Makes" "Sunday" "In the Kitchen" "Prime Time" STEPHEN JAY GOULD Gould on Writing: "Pieces of Eight: Confession of a Humanistic Naturalist" "The Creation Myths of Cooperstown" "A Cerion for Christopher" "The Great Western and the Fighting Temeraire" EDWARD HOAGLAND Hoagland on Writing: "To the Point: Truth Only Essays Can Tell" "The Courage of Turtles" "In Okefenokee" "Learning to Eat Soup" bell hooks hooks on Writing: "Women Who Write Too Much" "Black Women Writing" "Touching the Earth" "Justice: Childhood Love Lessons" JAMAICA KINCAID Kincaid on Writing: "Writing = Life" "In History" "Alien Soil" "Garden of Envy" URSULA LE GUIN Le Guin on Writing: "Prospects for Women in Writing" "The Fisherwoman's Daughter" "The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction" "Along the Platte" BARRY LOPEZ Lopez on Writing: "We are Shaped by the Sound of the Wind, the Slant of Sunlight" "The Stone Horse" "Apologia" "A Presentation of Whales" CYNTHIA OZICK Ozick on Writing: "On Permission to Write" "The Hole/Birth Catalog" "A Drugstore in Winter" "Rushdie in the Louvre" SALMAN RUSHDIE Rushdie on Writing: "Imaginary Homelands" "The Riddle of Midnight: India, August 1987" "Censorship" "In Good Faith" EDWARD SAID Said on Writing: "On Writing a Memoir" "No Reconciliation Allowed" "Palestine, Then and Now: An Exile's Journey through Israel and the Occupied Territories" "The Mind of Winter: Reflections on Life in Exile" SCOTT RUSSELL SANDERS Sanders on Writing: "The Singular First Person" "Writing from the Center" "Letter to a Reader" "Buckeye" AMY TAN Tan on Writing: "Lost Lives of Women" "Mother Tongue" "The Language of Discretion" "Required Reading and Other Dangerous Subjects" JOHN UPDIKE Updike on Writing: "Why Write?" "Cemeteries" "Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Masters" "The Tarbox Police" ALICE WALKER Walker on Writing: "The Black Writer and the Southern Experience" "In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens" "My Daughter Smokes" "Beyond the Peacock: The Reconstruction of Flannery O'Connor" EDWARD O. WILSON Wilson on Writing: "The Writing Life" "The Serpent" "Ethics and Religion" "Humanity Seen from a Distance" The Student Writers on Writing Sarah Huntley, "Before Beginning" Monique Fournier, "Bees and Fears: Why I Write" Melvin Sterne, Untitled Kathe McAllister, "Blue Sky and Gravel: Where There Is No Plot" Heidi Beck, "Why I Write" Spencer Schaffner, "The Five-Paragraph Essay: Friend or Foe?" Marianne Rasmussen, "The Selfish Art: Exploring Identity Through Writing" Appendix, RESOURCES FOR ESSAY WRITERS