From the Publisher: Twenty years ago Natalie Goldberg's classic, Writing Down the Bones, broke new ground in its approach to writing as a practice. Now, Old Friend from Far Away-her first book since Writing Down the Bones to focus solely on writing-reaffirms Goldberg's status as a foremost teacher of writing, and completely transforms the practice of writing memoir. To write memoir, we must first know how to remember. Through timed, associative, and meditative exercises, Old Friend from Far Away guides you to the attentive state of thought in which you discover and open forgotten doors of memory. At once a beautifully written celebration of the memoir form, an innovative course full of practical teachings, and a deeply affecting meditation on consciousness, love, life, and death, Old Friend welcomes aspiring writers of all levels and encourages them to find their unique voice to tell their stories. Goldberg's enormously popular workshops have given countless students the ability to heed the call to write. Old Friend from Far Away recreates her trademark workshop style with its terse, demanding writing "sprints" that train the hand and mind to quicken their pace and give up conscious control. These exercises divert the eye from the obvious and redirect it to the tactile details we miss, the embarrassments we pass over, and the complications we overlook in the blur of everyday living. Goldberg writes, "No one says it, but writing induces the state of love." Old Friend from Far Away guides us into that state of love, where heightened attention and a rhythm of focus allow the patterns and details of the past to emerge on the page. Millions of Americans want to write about their lives. With Old Friend as the road map for getting started and following through, writers and readers will gain a deeper understanding of their own minds, learn to connect with their senses in order to find the detail and truth that give their written words power and authenticity, and unfold the natural structure of the stories they carry within. An absolute joy to read, it is a profound affirmation of the capacity of the written word to remember the past, free us from it, and forever transform the way we think about ourselves and our lives. Like Writing Down the Bones, it will become an old friend to which readers return again and again.

Always Apprentices collects five years of intimate, wide-ranging conversations with many of today's most prominent writers, taken from the pages of the Believer . The participants don't limit themselves to issues of writing and craft, but instead offer unfettered exchanges on a wide range of topics--from what it means to be a consumer to whether or not to kill a deer, from how we get to know each other to walking while inebriated. The interviews feature the serious-yet-casual Believer approach to the often staid interview format. For example, Sheila Heti asks Mary Gaitskill, "If you go into a room or go to a party, is there a basic disposition you have toward humans going through the world?" Elsewhere, Colum McCann begins his conversation with Aleksandar Hemon by asking, "What are we doing here? Why aren't we in a pub?" Other interviews include Don DeLillo talking with Bret Easton Ellis; Joan Didion talking with Vendela Vida; and Barry Hannah talking with Wells Tower.

"Essays in direct line from Stanislavsky, Chekhov, Shaw, and Brecht" —Mike Nichols A collection of essays from Pulitzer Prize winning playwright David Mamet adressing many issues in contemporary American theater Temporarily putting aside his role as playwright, director, and screen-writer, David Mamet digs deep and delivers thirty outrageously diverse vignettes. On subjects ranging from the vanishing American pool hall, family vacations, and the art of being a bitch, to the role of today's actor, his celebrated contemporaries and predecessors, and his undying commitment to the theater, David Mamet's concise style, lean dialogue, and gut-wrenching honesty give us a unique view of the world as he sees it.

Young Fred Waitzkin is a Jewish boy stretched between the divergent values of parents who cannot tolerate one another. Fred's father, Abe, is a brilliantly talented salesman whose relentless will drives him to succeed-he literally brightens American cities with fluorescent lighting fixtures. Abe marries Stella, an abstract artist and daughter of a wealthy industrialist with whom Abe forges an alliance. When his parents' marriage disintegrates, Fred retreats into fishing, learning the trade from the master captains of Bimini. In scenes ranging from Long Island synagogues to evenings with famous painters to the boats of drug smugglers and the once marlin-rich waters of the Gulf Stream, Fred sinks boats and battles thousand-pounders believing that fishing is the only hope. Woven through this compelling narrative are moving insights about childhood, families, and a love of the sea.

We've all made a mess. And that means we all have a message. This is the book that shows you how to take the former and make it into the latter. FROM THE NY TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR When Anna David got sober and sold a book about her recovery to the biggest publisher in the world, she thought she'd made it. She was wrong. Still, after years of struggle and self-discovery, she ended up thriving personally and professionally. Now she's sharing what she's learned-and showing others how to do the same. In this page-turning and useful memoir-meets-manual, David reveals her personal lows (doing cocaine by herself while contemplating suicide), her career lows (a past-his-prime celebrity hurling a phone at her as she wrote his biography) and how her life today wouldn't be possible without those experiences. The last quarter of the book is a practical guide so that readers can make their own mess into a message-and memoir. In this completely comprehensive "biz-oir" packed with proven and authentic tools and techniques, memoirists-in-the-making will travel with David on her journey from struggling addict to New York Times bestselling writer/entrepreneur and also learn: -How to determine a memoir message and "why" -How to select scenes -The advantages and disadvantages of traditional and self-publishing -How to come up with a title, rewrite a book and hire editors -Potential legal concerns and how to avoid them -How to gather blurbs, write acknowledgments and arrange for a foreword -How to be set up for success on Amazon -The importance of an Advanced Reader Team And much more. The best time to write a book was 10 years ago. The second best time is now. To start creating the business tool that will change your career-and life-click ADD TO CART before the price changes.

Leonard Wolf, a retired professor now in his early eighties, is the kind of person who likes to use a medieval astrolabe, dress in Basque shepherd's clothing, and convince otherwise sensible people to quit their jobs and follow their passions. Leonard believes that inside everyone is an artist, and that happiness in life depends on valuing and acting upon one's creative impulse. In The Treehouse, her most personal book yet, Naomi Wolf outlines her father's lessons in creating lasting success and happiness, and offers inspiration for the artist in all of us. Drawn from Leonard's lecture notes, the chapters of The Treehouse remind us to "Be Still and Listen," "Use Your Imagination," and "Do Nothing Without Passion," and that "Your Only Wage Will Be Joy" and "Mistakes Are Part of the Draft." This is a journey of self-discovery in which the creative endeavor is paramount. The Treehouse is a stirring personal history, a meditation on fathers and daughters, an argument for honoring the creative impulse, and a unique instruction in the art of personal happiness.

Spanning three decades of his literary career, from Catch-22 to comments on the Persian Gulf War, Conversations with Joseph Heller contains a selection of the most significant, informative, and interesting interviews with one of America's foremost novelists. In these interviews Heller reveals his interest in the structure, effects, and themes of his works, his satirical purposes, the influences upon him, his writing methods, his political opinions, and a host of other topics that challenge and engage his lively and reflective mind. Included here are two interviews not previously published, interviews from student newspapers and university magazines, and two highly comic ""anti-interviews"" with close friends Mel Brooks and George Mandel. Here are two largely serious interviews with his friends Robert Alan Aurthur and Barbara Gelb. Also in this collection are Heller's conversations with authors Martin Amis and George Plimpton and a probing exchange with Bill Moyers about democracy, politics, and Heller's Picture This. Among the interviews are his talks with Sam Merrill in Playboy, Paul Krassner of The Realist, and with Chet Flippo of Rolling Stone.

Natalia Ginzburg, arguably the most important woman writer of postwar Italy, always spoke of herself with irrepressible modesty. Yet the woman who claimed she "never managed to climb up mountains" in fact wrote the history of twentieth-century Italy with her sparse and captivating prose, chronicling Fascism, war, and the Nazi occupation as well as the intimacies of family life. Ginzburg's marriage to Leone Ginzburg, who met his death at the hands of the Nazis for his anti-Fascists activities, and her work for the Einaudi publishing house placed her squarely in the center of Italian political and cultural life. But whether writing about the Turin of her childhood, the Abruzzi countryside, where her family was interned during World War II, or contemporary Rome, Ginzburg never shied away from the traumas of history-even if she approached them only indirectly, through the mundane details and catastrophes of personal life. Intensely reserved, Ginzburg said that she "crept toward autobiography stealthily like a wolf." But she did openly discuss her life and her work in an extraordinary series of interviews for Italian radio in 1990. Never before published in English, It's Hard to Talk about Yourself presents a vivid portrait of Ginzburg in her own words on the forces that shaped her remarkable life-politics, publishing, literature, and family. This fluid translation will join Ginzburg's autobiography, Family Sayings , as one of the most important records of her life and, as the editors write in their preface, "the last, unexpected, original book by Natalia Ginzburg."

The interviews in this collection will convince the reader that Jerzy Kosinski's public persona was one of the greatest creations. Few authors were ever more adept at press interviews. For Kosinski, the author of nine novels, including The Painted Bird, Steps, Being There , and The Hermit of 69th Street , the interview was part performance, part public relations, part blind date. Kosinski in person was different from the existential adventurer in his novels. He was not so much engaged as engaging. though his fiction was brutal, he was charming. The contrast between Kosinski and the intensity of his fiction created the backdrop for his interviews. Like his readers, Kosinski's interviews were obsessed with the facts of his life. As a young boy he survived the Holocaust. He escaped Communist Poland. His life became the stuff of novels. He came to the United States with little money and no command of the English, but within a year he was a Ford Fellow at Columbia University and not long afterward was married to an American heiress and was living on Park Avenue. Yet Kosinski felt that his unique experiences, when transmuted to fiction, became a didactic lesson for others. A human being is loaded with the greatest power, he says in one interview, his imagination and the power to transcend his own conditions. The interviews here are published chronologically without abridgement. The same questions recur and Kosinski's answers are filled with discrepancies and contradictions. A good interview, he once wrote, is like truth itself, the temporary resolution of various contradictions. These compelling conversations recapture part of Jerzy Kposinski, who took his own life on May 3, 1991.