In this collection of short essays, Annie Dillard--the author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and An American Childhood--illuminates the dedication, absurdity, and daring that characterize the existence of a writer. A moving account of Dillard's own experience, The Writing Life offers deep insight into one of the most mysterious professions.

This New York Times bestselling novel by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Dillard is a mesmerizing evocation of life in the Pacific Northwest during the last decades of the 19th century.

Annie Dillard -- "one of the most distinctive voices in American letters today" (Boston Globe) -- collects her favorite selections from her own writings in this compact volume. A perfect introduction to one of America's most acclaimed and bestselling authors.

In Modern American Memoirs, two very discerning writers and readers have selected samples from 35 of the finest memoirs written in this century, including contributions by such diverse writers as Margaret Mead, Malcolm X, Maxine Hong Kingston, Loren Eisely, and Zora Neale Hurston. Chosen for their value as excellent examples of the art of biography as well as for their superb writing, the excerpts present a broad range of American life, and offer vivid insight into the real-life events that shaped their authors. Here, readers can learn about the time when Harry Crews, playing as...

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is the story of a dramatic year in Virginia's Roanoke Valley. Annie Dillard sets out to see what she can see. What she sees are astonishing incidents of "beauty tangled in a rapture with violence."

Her personal narrative highlights one year's exploration on foot in the Virginia region through which Tinker Creek runs. In the summer, Dillard stalks muskrats in the creek and contemplates wave mechanics; in the fall, she watches a monarch butterfly migration and dreams of Arctic caribou. She tries to con a coot; she collects pond water and examines it...

Creative nonfiction, also known as narrative nonfiction, liberated journalism by inviting writers to dramatize, interpret, speculate, and even re-create their subjects. Lee Gutkind collects twenty-five essays that flourished in this new turf, all originally published in the groundbreaking journal he founded, Creative Nonfiction, now in its tenth anniversary year.

Many of the writers here are crossing genres--from poetry to fiction to nonfiction. Annie Dillard provides the introduction, while Gutkind discusses the creative and ethical parameters of this new genre. The selections...

Toby Maytree first sees Lou Bigelow on her bicycle in postwar Provincetown, Massachusetts. Her laughter and loveliness catch his breath. Maytree is a Provincetown native, an educated poet of thirty. As he courts Lou, just out of college, her stillness draws him. Hands-off, he hides his serious wooing, and idly shows her his poems.

In spare, elegant prose, Dillard traces the Maytrees' decades of loving and longing. They live cheaply among the nonconformist artists and writers that the bare tip of Cape Cod attracts. When their son Petie appears, their innocent Bohemian friend Deary...

Ecumenical in scope, these fifty devotions invite the reader to contemplate the great themes of Christmas and the significance that the coming of Jesus has for each of us - not only during Advent, but every day. Whether dipped into at leisure or used...