Includes an Integrated Digital Companion featuring: Writing Prompts suggested by the authors, tied directly to their memoirs and interviews; A Video Library of authors reading their essays; Insights, Influences, and Author Biographies; and Access to additional original memoirs from the Chapter One monthly newsletter.

The Gift of Possibility: Writers on Writing is designed to serve as a complete text for developing writers, Creative Writing students, and the instructors who guide them. Built around fifty short essays, memoirs, and interviews, it offers advice and insight from some of America’s best writers on craft, voice, creativity, mentorship, influences, and a host of other topics, including how to get published and, as poet Jane Hirshfield puts it, “the value of not knowing why you write.” The pieces are intentionally brief—ideal for classroom discussion—and each one offers a different take on how contemporary authors think, begin, revise, and polish their work. Imagine having fifty successful writers come to your writing room or classroom, speak directly to you or your students, and answer your questions; you will get a sense of the intimate, personal reader-to-writer connection this book offers.