Description: A thoughtful and practical guide for writers wanting to dig into difficult or personal subjects, this book offers a road map to the special craft techniques that will allow authors to navigate trauma to craft compelling and accessible prose.
Brief description: Nicole Walker is the author of Processed Meats: Essays on Food, Flesh and Navigating Disaster (2021) Sustainability: A Love Story (2018) and the collaborative collection The After-Normal: Brief, Alphabetical Essays on a Changing Planet. (2019). She has previously published the nonfiction collections Where the Tiny Things Are (2017), Egg (2017), Micrograms (2016), Quench Your Thirst with Salt (2013), and a book of poems, This Noisy Egg (2010). She edited for Bloomsbury the essay collections Science of Story (2019) with Sean Prentiss and Bending Genre: Essays on Creative Nonfiction (2013) with Margot Singer. She is the co-president of NonfictioNOW and is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts award and a noted author in Best American Essays. Her work has been most recently published in the New York Times, Longreads, and Ploughshares, among other places. She teaches at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, AZ and serves as the Crux Series Editor for University of Georgia Press.
Review Quotes:
"Writing the Hard Stuff is a timely, reective, and instructive writing guide. Drawing on Nicole Walker's experiences as a writer and teacher, it is both deeply personal and profoundly universal, offering a supportive roadmap for writers looking to connect with their craft and with readers." --Laurie Edwards, Teaching Professor, Writing Program, Northeastern University, USA
"If Writing the Hard Stuff was only a brilliant craft book-which it is-that would be enough. But Nicole Walker goes a step further by always showing her work: not only the life experiences that brought her to the practical, effective, and heart-opening writing advice she shares here, but also how she's applied the lessons she's learned to become a more honest and effective writer, teacher, and community member. Many books will make you a better writer; this one might make you a better human. Don't miss it." --Matt Bell, author of Refuse to Be Done: How to Write and Rewrite a Novel in Three Drafts