Creative Writing Resources

FOR UNC CHARLOTTE MA STUDENTS

MA Creative Thesis and Projects Overview

INTERESTED IN MFA PROGRAMS? 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