A Reading List for Women Writers

1 Under Cover: A Reading List for Women Writers Eunice Victoria Scarfe Faculty of Extension University of Alberta 2008 (please note: those marked with * are Canadian, most of which are available on amazon.ca And please remember that the books here are listed because of their place in class discussions during 07-08. This is not a list of every wonderful book ever written! Also, some are hard to find or out of print. Nevertheless, I want writers to know about them.) 2 WRITERS ON WRITING: YOURS, THEIRS, OURS Barrington, Judith. Writing the Memoir. Eighth Mountain Press, 1997. Berkinow, Louis. Among Women. Harper, 1981. A ground–breaking personal piece of literary criticism looking at the relationships between women in fiction: mother and daughter, sisters, friends, lovers. Her book observes that traditionally, when a man walks out of a room in a novel, the plot follows him. An influential book on the design of Saga writing workshops. Bly, Carol. Beyond the Writers' Workshop: New Ways to Write Creative Nonfiction. Anchor Books, 2001. This is a current, responsible look at the act and art of writing. Boland, Eavan. Object Lessons: The Life of the Woman and The Poet in Our Time. Norton, 1995. Autobiography and argument by one of Ireland's best poets. Bolker, Joan. The Writer's Home Companion: An Anthology of the World's Best Writing Advice, from Keats to Kunitz. Henry Holt, l997. Well this is an ambitious claim for a book, but Bolker's participation in the writing life is to be taken into account. The anthology includes her remarkable essay: "A Room of One's Own is Not Enough", written after many years of working with women who suffered writer's block and the absence of confidence in using their own voice. The anthology also includes Anne Tyler's essay "Still Just Writing". Brande, Dorothea. Becoming a Writer. Tarcher, (l934) 1981. Written when there were few ‘writers writing on writing’. Cameron, Julia. The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity. Tarcher, 1992. 'A course in discovering and recovering your creative self'. --------The Right to Write: An Invitation and Initiation into the Writing Life. Tarcher, 1998. Conway, Jill Ker. When Memory Speaks: Exploring the Art of Autobiography. 1998. One of the best. Cixous, Helene. Coming to Writing and Other Essays. Harvard, 1991. --------Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing. Columbia U Press, l993. Dillard, Annie. Living by Fiction. Harper, 1982. --------The Writing Life. Harper, 1989. See also her An American Childhood, a memoir. Epel, Naomi, ed. Writers Dreaming: Dreams and the Creative Process. Vintage, 1993. Elbow, Peter. Writing with Power: Techniques for Mastering the Writing Process. Elbow is a major theorist on writing, and a master teacher. Estes, Clarissa Pinkola. The Gift of Story. Ballantine, 1993. A tiny blue postage–stamp of a book, by the author of Women Who Run With the Wolves, which addresses the healing function of stories––we are rich, and strong, only in so far as we have the story––our story––in our hands. An eloquent essay. Gray, Dorothy Randall. Soul Between the Lines: Freeing your Creative Spirit Through Writing. Avon, 1998. Dorothy teaches for IWWG at Skidmore College each summer. Don't miss her class if you go! Goldberg, Natalie. Long Quiet Highway. Bantam, 1993. (Goldberg's own story.) --------Wild Mind: Living The Writer's Life. Bantam, 1990. Goldberg has a million ways (well almost) to get the content of experience and imagination down on the page. --------Writing Down the Bones: Freeing The Writer Within. Shambhala, 1986. Gornick, Vivian. The Situation and the Story: The Art of Personal Narrative. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001. An extremely thoughtful essay, highly recommended. 3 Hampl, Patricia. I Could You Tell You Stories: Sojourns in the Land of Memory. Norton, 1999. A Minneapolis writer, I believe. An interesting section on how she and her mother negotiated the content of her writing – or her right to write it. Heilbrun, Carolyn. Hamlet's Mother and Other Women. Ballantine, 1990. --------Writing a Woman's Life. Norton, 1988. (Heilbrun writes mystery under the name of Amanda Cross). "There are four ways to write a woman's life: the woman herself may tell it, in what she chooses to call an autobiography; she may tell it in what she chooses to call fiction; a biographer, woman or man, may write the woman's life in what is called a biography; or the woman may write her own life in advance of living it, unconsciously, and without recognizing or naming the process." --------The Last Gift of Time: Life Beyond Sixty. Ballantine, l997. Part essay, part journal and the author of How to Write a Woman's Life. Ballantine, 1997. Hollzer, Burghild Nina. A Walk Between Heaven and Earth: A Personal Journal on Writing and the Creative Process. Bell Tower, 1994. *Hodgins, Jack. A Passion for Narrative: A Guide for Writing Fiction. M & S, l993. A major Vancouver Island writer discusses the art of writing. Hooks, Bell. Wounds of Passion: A Writing Life. Holt, 1997. (and see her remarkable memoir: Bone Black) Hugo, Richard. The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing. Norton, 1979. Former director of the creative writing program at the U of Montana, Missoula Campus. A collection of lectures, essays, and reflections, all ‘directed toward helping the writer with that silly, absurd, maddening, futile, enormously rewarding activity: writing poems.’ Lamott, Anne. Bird by Bird: Pantheon, l994. The author remembers her father explaining how to write a report on birds: bird by bird. Perhaps you hear 'word by word' behind her title. She has others as well. Le Quin, Ursula. The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction. Perigree, 1979. *Lennox, John ed. Selected Letters of Margaret Laurence and Adele Wiseman. U of Toronto Press, 1997. Intimate and informative correspondence on the lives and work of two authors who were Canadian contemporaries. Lerner, Betsy. The Forest for the Trees: An Editor's Advice to Writers. Riverhead Books, 2000. There is nothing like this. The advice is witty, inside information no writer should do without. She also has a memoir, listed elsewhere. Mairs, Nancy. Voice Lessons: On Becoming a (Woman) Writer. Beacon, 1994. *Manguel, Alberto. A History of Reading. Knopf, 1996. One of a kind by a prolific editor of anthologies. McQuade, Molly. By Herself: Women Reclaim Poetry. Graywolf Press, 2000. Essays by contemporary poets on their lives and work. *Melnyk, George, ed. The Literary History of Alberta, vol I & II. U of Alberta Press, 98, 99. If you're an Alberta writer or resident, or even if you're not, you'll want to read this guide through western writers and writing. Moyers, Bill. Fooling with Words: A Celebration of Poets and Their Craft. Morrow, 1999. Includes essays with Jane Hirshfield, Mark Doty ,Marge Piercy. Nin, Anais. In Favor of the Sensitive Man and other essays. Harcourt, 1976. "I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live. We also write to heighten our own awareness of life. We write to lure and enchant and console others. We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection. We write, like Proust, to render all of it eternal, and to persuade ourselves that it is eternal. If you do not breathe through 4 writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it." Norris, Kathleen. Dakota: A Spiritual Geography. Houghton, 1993. A New York writer returns to South Dakota at the time of the grandmother's death––and stays. An eloquent evocation of place, space and solitude. Read it with Sharon Butala's portrait of Saskatchewan in The Perfection of the Morning. Harper, 1994. Oliver, Mary. Rules for the Dance: A Handbook for Writing and Reading Metrical Verse. Houghton Mifflin, l998. And read Oliver's prize-winning poetry too – many collections. -----Winter Hours. Houghton Mifflin, 1999. For the first time Oliver speaks in her own voice, reflective essays on the art of writing, and her life in writing. Tender and warm and eloquent. Olsen, Tillie. Silences. Dell, 1978. A classic. The silencing of women's voices, by ourselves and by others. I believe she died in late 2006 or early 2007. The only other text she wrote, to my knowledge, is a collection of stories called “I Stand Here Ironing”. Phillips, Jan. Marry Your Muse: Making a Lasting Commitment to your Creativity. Quest Books, 1997. Both a guide for writers and essays by writers. "Coming to Story" (Scarfe) is in here. Plimpton, George, ed. Women Writers at Work. Penguin, 1989. Rich, Adrienne. What is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics. Norton, 1993. Essays by one of the States' most influential and honored poets. Read her with the Canadian (Quebec) writer Nicole Brossard. --------Blood, Bread, and Poetry: Select Prose 1979–1985. Norton, 1986. --------Arts of the Possible: Essays and Conversation. Norton, 2001. --------and everything else she has written, particularly On Lies Secrets and Silence. Rilke, Rainer Maria. Letters to a Young Poet. Norton, 1934. Read this, read this, read this. *Robertson, Heather. Writing from Life: A Guide for Writing True Stories. M & S, 1998. Russ, Joanna. How To Suppress Women's Writing. U of Texas Press, 1983. "She didn't write it. She wrote it, but she shouldn't have. She wrote it, but look what she wrote about. She wrote it, but she wrote only one of it. She wrote it, but she isn't really an artist, and it isn't really art. She wrote it, but she had help." *Scheir, Libby, Sheard and Wachtel, eds.

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