First Words: Earliest Writings from Favorite Contemporary Authors - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0945575718 ISBN 13: 9780945575719

Publisher: Algonquin Books, 1993

Synopsis

A collection of writings created by forty-two successful American authors as children or adolescents includes "Jhonathan and the Witchs" by a nine-year-old Stephen King, as well as works by John Updike, Gore Vidal, Michael Crichton, and Joyce Carol Oates, among others.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Editor Paul Mandelbaum persuaded twenty-two authors to share their childhood writings and their treasured photographs. What he's collected is a fascinating revelation of young creative minds at work, wrestling with early versions of ideas that were to take hold of their writings in later years.

Of course, the young Michael Crichton would describe what goes on in a dissection lab. Of course, Madeleine L'Engle would wonder about space and the meaning of eternity. Margaret Atwood would questions conventional female behavior, arguing for the right to smoke cigars. And Stephen King would write a macabre story of slicing and piercing at age nine.

First Words is an inspiration to budding writers, encouraging teachers, and just plain readers.

FIRST WORDS features the early works of: Margaret Atwood, Roy Blunt, Jr., Paul Bowles, Pat Conroy, Michael Crichton, Rita Dove, Clyde Edgerton, Gail Godwin, Allan Gurganus, Charles Johnson, Stephen King, Maxine Hong Kingston, Ursula K. Le Guin, Madeleine L'Engle, Jill McCorkle, Norman Mailer, Joyce Carol Oates, William Styron, Amy Tan, John Updike, Gore Vidal, Tobias Wolf

About the Author:

Paul Mandelbaum grew up in Washington, D.C., and attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop. A freelance journalist and writer, he has taught magazine journalism at the University of Iowa and Drake University, was an editor at Baltimore magazine and Managing Editor for Story magazine. He has published fiction in numerous journals, including Prairie Schooner, DoubleTake, Black Warrior Review, and Poets and Writers. He lives in Culver City, California.

About this edition

• Publisher: Algonquin Books
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0945575718
• ISBN 13: 9780945575719
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 502
• Editor: Mandelbaum Paul