On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft is a memoir by American author Stephen King that describes his experiences as a writer and his advice for aspiring writers. Originally published in 2000 by Charles Scribner's Sons, it was King's first book after he was involved in a car accident a year earlier. Scribner has published two expanded editions: The 10th Anniversary Edition (2010) has an updated reading list from King; and the 20th Anniversary Edition (2020) adds contributions from King's two sons, Joe Hill and Owen.
Philip Milton Roth was an American novelist and short-story writer. Roth's fiction—often set in his birthplace of Newark, New Jersey—is known for its intensely autobiographical character, for philosophically and formally blurring the distinction between reality and fiction, for its "sensual, ingenious style" and for its provocative explorations of American identity. He first gained attention with the 1959 short story collection Goodbye, Columbus, which won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. Ten years later, he published the bestseller Portnoy's Complaint. Nathan Zuckerman, Roth's literary alter ego, narrates several of his books. A fictionalized Philip Roth narrates some of his others, such as the alternate history The Plot Against America.
Robert Studley Forrest Hughes AO was an Australian-born art critic, writer, and producer of television documentaries. He was described in 1997 by Robert Boynton of The New York Times as "the most famous art critic in the world."
John Robert McCrum is an English writer and editor who held senior editorial positions at Faber & Faber over seventeen years, followed by a long association with The Observer.
James S. Shapiro is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University who specializes in Shakespeare and the Early Modern period. Shapiro has served on the faculty at Columbia University since 1985, teaching Shakespeare and other topics, and he has published widely on Shakespeare and Elizabethan culture.
Darin Strauss is an American writer whose work has earned a Guggenheim Fellowship and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Strauss's 2011 book Half a Life, won the 2011 NBCC Award for memoir/autobiography. His most recent book, The Queen of Tuesday, came out in August 2020. It was nominated for the Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize.
Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995) is a memoir by Barack Obama that explores the events of his early years in Honolulu and Chicago until his entry into Harvard Law School in 1988. Obama originally published his memoir in 1995, when he was starting his political campaign for the Illinois Senate.
Tim Page is an American writer, music critic, editor, producer and professor who won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for his music criticism for The Washington Post. Anthony Tommasini, the chief music critic for The New York Times, has praised Page's criticism for its "extensive knowledge of cultural history, especially literature; the instincts and news sense of a sharp beat reporter; the skills of a good storyteller; infectious inquisitiveness; immunity to dogma; and an always-running pomposity detector." Other notable writings by Page include his biography of the novelist Dawn Powell, which is credited for helping to spark the revival of Powell's work, and a memoir that chronicles growing up with undiagnosed autism spectrum disorder.
Dani Shapiro is an American writer, the author of six novels including Family History (2003), Black & White (2007) and most recently Signal Fires (2022) and the best-selling memoirs Slow Motion (1998), Devotion (2010), Hourglass (2017), and Inheritance (2019). She has also written for magazines such as The New Yorker, The Oprah Magazine, Vogue, and Elle. In February 2019, she created an original podcast on iHeart Radio called Family Secrets.
Vance Nye Bourjaily was an American novelist, playwright, journalist, creative writing teacher, and essayist.
Benjamin Taylor is an American writer whose work has appeared in a number of publications including The Atlantic, Harper's, Esquire, Bookforum, BOMB, the Los Angeles Times, Le Monde, The Georgia Review, Raritan Quarterly Review, Threepenny Review, Salmagundi, Provincetown Arts and The Reading Room. He is a founding member of the Graduate Writing Program faculty of The New School in New York City, and has also taught at Washington University in St. Louis, the Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y, Bennington College and Columbia University. He has served as Secretary of the Board of Trustees of PEN American Center, has been a fellow of the MacDowell Colony and was awarded the Iphigene Ochs Sulzberger Residency at Yaddo. A Trustee of the Edward F. Albee Foundation, Inc., he is also a Fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities at New York University and a Guggenheim Fellow for 2012 - 2013. Taylor's biography of Marcel Proust, Proust: The Search, was published in October 2015 by Yale University Press as part of its newly launched Yale Jewish Lives series.
Reality Hunger: A Manifesto is a non-fiction book by American writer David Shields, published by Knopf on February 23, 2010. The book is written in a collage style, mixing quotations by the author with those from a variety of other sources. The book's manifesto is directed toward increasing art's engagement with the reality of contemporary life through the exploration of hybrid genres such as prose poetry and literary collage. In Vanity Fair, Elissa Schappell called Reality Hunger "a rousing call to arms for all artists to reject the laws governing appropriation, obliterate the boundaries between fiction and nonfiction, and give rise to a new modern form for a new century."
Susan Shapiro is the American author of 17 books, including The Byline Bible,Five Men Who Broke My Heart, Only as Good as Your Word, Lighting Up, Speed Shrinking, and What's Never Said, and coauthor of The Bosnia List and the New York Times bestseller Unhooked.
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail is the 2012 memoir by the American writer, author, and podcaster Cheryl Strayed. The memoir describes Strayed's 1,100-mile hike on the Pacific Crest Trail in 1995 as a journey of self-discovery. The book reached No. 1 on the New York Times Best Seller list, and was the first selection for Oprah's Book Club 2.0.
Michael Maren is an American journalist, screenwriter, and director.
Claire Dederer is an American writer who regularly contributes essays, reviews and criticism to publications including The New York Times. She has written three books, Love and Trouble, Poser: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses, and Monsters.
Chang & Eng is a book by American author Darin Strauss, published in 2000. It was a nominee for multiple awards, including the Pen Hemingway, the Barnes & Noble Discover Award, the New York Public Library's Literary Lions Award, and a winner of the American Library Association's Alex Award.
Piri Halasz is an American art critic, educator and writer.
A Promised Land is a memoir by Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. Published on November 17, 2020, it is the first of a planned two-volume series. Remaining focused on his political career, the presidential memoir documents Obama's life from his early years through to the events surrounding the killing of Osama bin Laden in May 2011. The book is 768 pages long and available in digital, paperback, and hardcover formats and has been translated into two dozen languages. There is also a 29-hour audiobook edition that is read by Obama himself.
The Queen of Tuesday is a book by American author Darin Strauss, published in August 2020. It has been a critical and commercial success, with positive reviews in newspapers and radio and television broadcasts across the country. It was named a best book of the year in The Washington Post, The Millions, Literary Hub and others, and is currently a finalist for the Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize.
