On Teaching and Writing Fiction - Softcover

Stegner, Wallace

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0142001473 ISBN 13: 9780142001479

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, 2002

Synopsis

Wallace Stegner founded the acclaimed Stanford Writing Program-a program whose alumni include such literary luminaries as Larry McMurtry, Robert Stone, and Raymond Carver. Here Lynn Stegner brings together eight of Stegner's previously uncollected essays-including four never-before-published pieces -on writing fiction and teaching creative writing. In this unique collection he addresses every aspect of fiction writing-from the writer's vision to his or her audience, from the use of symbolism to swear words, from the mystery of the creative process to the recognizable truth it seeks finally to reveal. His insights will benefit anyone interested in writing fiction or exploring ideas about fiction's role in the broader culture.

About this title

About the Author:

Wallace Stegner (1909–1993) was the author of, among other novels, All the Little Live Things (winner of a Commonwealth Club Gold Medal), Angle of Repose (winner of the Pulitzer Prize), and The Spectator Bird (winner of the National Book Award). His nonfiction includes The Sound of Mountain Water, The Uneasy Chair: A Biography of Bernard DeVoto, and Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs: Living and Writing in the West. Three of his short stories won O. Henry Prizes, and in 1980 he received the Robert Kirsch Award from the Los Angeles Times for his lifetime literary achievements.

Lynn Stegner is the author of the novels Undertow, Fata Morgana, and Pipers at the Gates of Dawn.

From Booklist:

The prolific (and Pulitzer Prize-winning) Stegner wore many hats as a writer--novelist, essayist, historian, biographer--but the subject closest to his heart was fiction. However, although a father of the creative writing program, he composed few pages on fiction as received art and teachable craft. This slim volume brings them together, essays and interviews, published and unpublished, to provide invaluable guidance for writers of all levels. Though there is practical advice here, these pieces don't provide blueprints for building a work of fiction but rather a shopping list of the tools a good writer needs in her toolbox: patience, humility, and character. It's all stated so epigrammatically that readers who underline are advised to start with a fresh pen. What lingers is a refreshingly classic (to call it old-fashioned would imply we don't need it) sense of the writer as a well-rounded individual. As daughter-in-law Lynn Stegner writes in the foreword, Wallace Stegner might have said, "A writer must aim to be the sort of man from whom a masterpiece is possible." Keir Graff
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0142001473
• ISBN 13: 9780142001479
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 144
• Editor: Stegner Lynn