Creative Writing Resources

FOR UNC CHARLOTTE MA STUDENTS

MA Capstone in Creative Writing Overview (updated 10.12.2023)

INTERESTED IN MFA or PH.D. PROGRAMS in CREATIVE WRITING? START HERE

MFA Guidance

MORE RESOURCES

Craft and Pedagogy Texts

  • De-Canon: centers writers and teachers of color
  • Alice LaPlante, Method and Madness: The Making of a Story
  • Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
  • Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter, What If? Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers
  • Annie Dillard. The Writing Life.
  • Aristotle, The Poetics
  • The Art of series at Graywolf Press
  • Brevity: Craft essays
  • Brenda Miller and Suzanna Paola, Tell It Slant: Creating, Refining, and Publishing Creative Nonfiction
  • Bret Anthony Johnston, Naming the World
  • Dinty W. Moore, Crafting the Personal Essay
  • Edwidge Danticat, Create Dangerously
  • E. M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel
  • Eudora Welty, The Eye of the Story: Selected Essays and Reviews
  • Felicia Rose Chavez, The Anti-Racist Workshop: How to Decolonize the Creative Writing Classroom
  • Flannery O’Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose
  • Francine Prose, Reading Like a Writer
  • Heather Sellers, The Practice of Creative Writing
  • Jane Alison, Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative
  • Janet Burroway, Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft and Imaginative Writing
  • Jerome Stern, Making Shapely Fiction
  • John Dufresne, The Lie That Tells a Truth: A Guide to Writing Fiction
  • John Steinbeck, (Ed. Robert Demott.) Working Days
  • John Gardner, The Art of Fiction
  • Lee Gutkind, You Can’t Make This Stuff Up: The Complete Guide to Writing Creative Nonfiction
  • Lynda Barry’s illustrated syllabus and assignments
  • Matt Bell, Refuse to be Done
  • Madison Smartt Bell, Narrative Design
  • Matthew Salesses, Craft in the Real World: Rethinking Fiction Writing and Workshopping
  • Michael Kardos, The Art and Craft of Fiction
  • Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within
  • The Paris Review Interviews
  • The Poets & Writers Complete Guide to Being a Writer, Kevin Latimer and Mary Gannon
  • Renni Browne and Dave King, Self-Editing for Fiction Writers
  • Sherry Ellis, Now Write!: Fiction Writing Exercises from Today’s Best Writing & Teachers
  • Vivian Gornick, The Situation and the Story: The Art of Personal Narrative

Other Writing Resources

Contemporary Writers

Here is (an ever-evolving) list of contemporary authors that I recommend: Contemporary Authors