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A Writer’s Reading List

There is not much in life where a person can succeed alone. Learning from others, being mentored and reading books are key activities for anyone wishing to strengthen their skills and creativity.

A Writer’s Reading List

What books are your favorites?

What literature has inspired you over the years?

What titles motivate you as a writer?

I have collected the beginnings of a reading list from what I personally have found helpful. It is made up of books I have read and ones I hope to dig into soon. A good number of the titles I discovered during my Masters of Fine Art in Creative Writing at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA.

Some of these books are helpful for the craft of writing. Others will inspire you creatively. A handful will motivate you to edit, while others are for the publication stage of a writer’s life.

Happy reading everyone!

Note: I have added a category to my blog called READING LIST. I will add to it over time. Please feel free to comment below with the names of books you have found helpful.

Reading List for Writers Authors Alexis Marie Chute Writes BLOG

FICTION & NON-FICTION HANDBOOKS

The Craft of Writing

By William Sloane

Beyond the Writers’ Workshop

By Carol Bly

The Art of Time in Memoir

BY Sven Birkerts

Writing & Selling your Memoir

By Paula Balzer

Burning Down the House

By Charles Baxter

Art and Fear

By Orland & Bayles

Narrative Design

By Madison Bell

Illuminations

By Walter Benjamin

What If?

By Painter & Bernays

Letters to a Fiction Writer

By Frederick Busch

Writing Fiction

By Janet Burroway

From Where You Dream

By Robert & Olen Butler

Six Memos for the Next Millenium

By Italo Calvino

Creating Fiction

By Julie Checkoway

Pen on Fire

By Barbara DeMarco-Barrett

Story Matters

By Denman & Shoupp

Aspects of the Novel

By E.M. Forester

The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers

By John Gardner

On Writing

By Stephen King

Writer’s Guide to Crafting Stories for Children

By Nancy Lamb

A Giacometti Portrait

By James Lord

Writing the Breakout Novel

By Donald Maas

The Lonely Voice

By Frank O’Connor

Reading Like a Writer

By Francine Prose

Writing in Pictures: How to Write and Illustrate Picture Books

By Uri Schulevitz

Deepening Fiction

By Stone & Nyren

If You Want to Write

By Brenda Ueland

Why I Write

By Eudora Welty

The King & The Corpse

By Heinrich Robert Zimmer

Backwards and Forwards

By David Ball

The Life of the Drama

By Eric Bentley

 The Playwright as Thinker

By Eric Bentley

The Empty Space

By Peter Brook

The Power of Myth

By J. Campbell & B. Moyers

Playwriting

By Louis Catron

Aristotle’s Poetics

By Gerald Else

The Art of Fiction

By John Gardner

How to Write a Selling Screenplay

By Christopher Keane

Screenwriting from the Soul

By Richard Krevolin

Bird by Bird

By Anne Lamott

An Experiment in Criticism

By C.S. Lewis

Screenplay: Writing the Picture

By R. Russin & & Missouri Downs W

The Screenwriter’s Bible

By David Trottier

The Writer’s Journey

BY Christopher Vogler

Picture This: How Pictures Work

By Molly Bang

How to Write a Children’s Picture Book

By Bine-Stock

Nonfiction Book Proposals Anybody Can Write

By Elizabeth Lyon

Writing With Pictures:  How to Write and Illustrate Children’s Books

By Uri Shulevitz

 


 

FICTION & NON-FICTION ESSAYS

  • Baxter, Burning Down the House
  • Baxter, The Art of Subtext
  • Baxter, Bringing the Devil to His Knees
  • Berg, Stephen (ed.), In Praise of What Persists
  • Birkerts, Sven, The Art of Time in Memoir
  • Calvino, Italo, Six Memos for the Next Millennium
  • Gornick, Vivian, The Situation and the Story
  • Gornick, Vivian, The End of the Novel of Love
  • Hersey, (ed)., The Writer’s Craft
  • Justice, Donald, “The Prose Sublime”: A Donald Justice Reader
  • Kundera, Milan, The Art of the Novel
  • O’Connor, Flannery, Mystery & Manners
  • Plimpton, George, The Writer’s Chapbook
  • Prose, Francine, Reading Like a Writer
  • Rich, Adrienne, On Lies, Secrets and Silence
  • Spitz, Ellen Handler, Inside Picture Books
  • Welty, Eudora, One Writer’s Beginnings
  • Welty, Eudora, The Eye of the Storm
  • Cooper, Susan, Dreams and Wishes: Essays on Writing for Children
  • Harrison, Barbara & Maguire, Gregory, Origins of Story: On Writing for Children
  • Marcus, Leonard, Ways of Telling: Conversations on the Art of the Picture Book
  • Zinsser, William, Worlds of Childhood: The Art and Craft of Writing for Children. 
  • Zinsser, William , On Writing Well

 


 

POETRY HANDBOOKS

The Practice of Poetry

By Behn & Twichell

Measures: Contemporary American Poetry in Traditional Forms

By Dacey & Jauss & Strong

Poetry Handbook

By Babette Deutsch

Poetic Meter and Poetic Form

By Paul Fussell

Rhyme’s Reason

By Hollander

The Poet’s Companion

By Dorianne Laux and Kim Addonizio

The Discovery of Poetry

By Mayes

Western Wind

By Nims

The Sound of Poetry

By Robert Pinsky

The Making of a Poem

By Mark Strand and Evan Boland (eds.)

The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics

 


 

POETRY ESSAYS

  • Bell, Old Snow Just Melting
  • Birkerts, The Electric Life: Essays on Modern Poetry
  • Bryan and Olsen, Eds., Planet on the Table:  Poets on the Reading Life
  • Dobyns, Best Words, Best Order
  • Eliot, The Sacred Wood
  • Glück, Proofs and Theories
  • Hass, Twentieth Century Pleasures
  • Heaney, Finders Keepers
  • Heaney, The Government of the Tongue
  • Hoagland, Real Sofistication: Essays on Poetry and Craft
  • Jarrell, Poetry and The Age
  • Justice, Platonic Scripts
  • Pinsky, Poetry and the World
  • Plumly, Argument and Song
  • Pound, The Literary Essays of Erza Pound
  • Sontag and Graham, After Confession:  Poetry as Autobiography
  • Stevens, The Necessary Angel
  • Vendler, Part of Nature, Part of Us
  • Vendler, The Breaking of Style
  • Vendler, The Music of What Happens
  • Voigt, The Flexible Lyric
  • Williamson, Introspection and Contemporary Poetry

 Here are some links to other reading lists for writers:

FlavorWire – 25 Books Every Writer Should Read

Bustle – 11 Books All Aspiring Writers Should Read, Because Spending Time with these Titles is like a Mini-Workshop

Open Culture – Earnest Hemingway Creates a Reading List for a Young Writer, 1934

Aerogramme Writer’s Studio – Stephen King’s Reading List for Writers