Off the Shelf: Writers on Writing

A writer finds that his fictional lark has been turned into a reality by someone else.

Have we suddenly become a nation of liars? Or have we just forgotten that there’s a limit to what we call nonfiction?

A writer’s experience of teaching the craft of writing behind bars.

When I was researching my nonfiction book “The Lost Art of Walking,” I came across this wonderful comic passage in P.G.

A mystery novelist encounters a real whodunit.

When publishers seemed a bit cool on his book proposal, Steve Almond made up his mind: He’d do it himself.

2010 marks a few anniversaries and an auspicious time to get reacquainted with one of America’s most beloved writers.

Writer Steve Oney spent decades researching the 1913 murder of Mary Phagan and the subsequent lynching of Leo Frank, but his voluminous files now belong to history.

Judging by the ‘Liar’ controversy, ethnicity is a no-no on young adult book covers.

As she sets a story in the world of high school, a writer wonders: Should it be based on her own experience or something else entirely?

The reasons why one writer’s self-explorations take fictional form.

The writer of the Special Agent Ana Grey mysteries went in search of a (fake) firearm for a photo shoot in New York and came across more trouble than she had bargained for.

‘Pride and Prejudice and Zombies’ and the like are literary concoctions that have momentary entertainment value, but the masterpieces that spawned them will live on.

An author gets a dose of small-town ‘show biz’ while on book tour.

In Cuba to post dispatches for an online magazine and act as a guide for Mariel Hemingway, the actress who was born shortly after her grandfather’s death, the author gets a shiny surprise.

A partnership of poets has always seemed right to her. The alternative would’ve been like something out of a Jay McInerney novel.

A poet in search of the proper form for his self-expression.

To the fervent reader and writer, the words on a page encompass the whole wide world and their place in it.

Yes, the history, culture and countryside are to be savored, but why let them come between you and a good book?

“ ‘I must not,’ said Jane, ‘think of rats.’ And proceeded to think of them as hard as she could.”

A writer gets lost in a nonfiction no man’s land.

A teething baby interrupts the flow of words that come only with sleep. What’s a writer to do?

Is there a subtle art to the way we inscribe books for others? You bet there is.

The making of a memoir: ‘Slow Motion.’

Author’s trip through the Atlas Mountains reminds her how women who don’t fit typical gender roles are undermined by men -- and by other women

There’s something about traveling outside your comfort zone, Mark Haskell Smith believes, that can set off a writer’s radar.

A writer’s meditation on a Japanese poet-priest springs from an unexpected, private source of inspiration.

Why one writer can’t turn down any assignments.

What do they really do with all that time?

How one writer found a valuable expression of her identity in a letter.

She may not yet be supple or limber, still or steady, or calm, but the more sessions she attended, the more she changed.

Gone are the days of meandering through the dictionary. But gone too is the serendipity of finding other great words while meandering.

With social networking tools today, there is simply no getting away.

At least 25 years later, the fantasy game still provides an escape.

A writer remembers her childhood writing room in Iran.

Is there anything worse than writing your second novel?