Writing as Conversation: Literature, Writing, Reading and Expression A transformative examination of writing styles and communication through the complexity of the English language. A writing that gives the best nuances of the human intellect, Writing as Conversation: Language, Writing, Reading, and Expression is a book on written and verbal communication within literature. A selection of chapters includes the very precise aspects of how and why writing is an important tool of discovery. This is also a book that may serve the criteria for authors to hold to their own abilities as a potential resource for insight. Writing is expansive; the world of books and literature and communication for that matter is a definite one and requires the right attention. Authors and the like may prefer reading this book as a self-qualified, esteem-driven volume that brings forward the writing of this author. The author of this book wishes for you to enjoy it and give it your own thumbs up or thumbs down. Either way, Writing as Conversation is a book that reinterprets the skill of interpretational writing in the universal theater of literature.
When 16-year-old poetry blogger Tessa Dickinson is involved in a car accident and loses her eyesight for 100 days, she feels like her whole world has been turned upside-down. Terrified that her vision might never return, Tessa feels like she has nothing left to be happy about. But when her grandparents place an ad in the local newspaper looking for a typist to help Tessa continue writing and blogging, an unlikely answer knocks at their door: Weston Ludovico, a boy her age with bright eyes, an optimistic smile...and no legs. Knowing how angry and afraid Tessa is feeling, Weston thinks he can help her. But he has one condition -- no one can tell Tessa about his disability. And because she can't see him, she treats him with contempt: screaming at him to get out of her house and never come back. But for Weston, it's the most amazing feeling: to be treated like a normal person, not just a sob story. So he comes back. Again and again and again. Tessa spurns Weston's "obnoxious optimism", convinced that he has no idea what she's going through. But Weston knows exactly how she feels and reaches into her darkness to show her that there is more than one way to experience the world. As Tessa grows closer to Weston, she finds it harder and harder to imagine life without him -- and Weston can't imagine life without her. But he still hasn't told her the truth, and when Tessa's sight returns he'll have to make the hardest decision of his life: vanish from Tessa's world...or overcome his fear of being seen. 100 Days of Sunlight is a poignant and heartfelt novel by author Abbie Emmons. If you like sweet contemporary romance and strong family themes then you'll love this touching story of hope, healing, and getting back up when life knocks you down.
Collected interviews with the Nobel Prize winner in which she describes herself as an African American writer and that show her to be an artist whose creativity is intimately linked with her African American experience
George Orwell set out ‘to make political writing into an art’, and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature – his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and Animal Farm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwell’s essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership. In Why I Write, the first in the Orwell’s Essays series, Orwell describes his journey to becoming a writer, and his movement from writing poems to short stories to the essays, fiction and non-fiction we remember him for. He also discusses what he sees as the ‘four great motives for writing’ – ‘sheer egoism’, ‘aesthetic enthusiasm’, ‘historical impulse’ and ‘political purpose’ – and considers the importance of keeping these in balance. Why I Write is a unique opportunity to look into Orwell’s mind, and it grants the reader an entirely different vantage point from which to consider the rest of the great writer’s oeuvre. 'A writer who can – and must – be rediscovered with every age.' — Irish Times
When we write, we also engage in conversations with other writers. The writers are expressing ideas, sharing opinions, working through problems, agreeing, and disagreeing. The writers of Why White Rice? embrace this idea fully but also move past just saying it: they demonstrate it through a book that is a conversation on writing---distinct and honest voices contending with one another, responding to each other, and working through problems. This book on writing comes from four community college teachers with different backgrounds and training (with contributions from students, as well) in a collection of voices that speaks directly to students and writers. It drops the pretense of traditional textbooks and talks honestly with students in a way that has them reading and responding in some surprising ways. Reading this book is like sitting down with that teacher who cared enough to tell it to you straight---to be honest with you. Even if it stung a little, you knew she was right and you listened. About the Author The book features four authors---all community college teachers, all writers, but each with different training and backgrounds. Eric DeVillez holds an MFA in creative writing from Roosevelt University, Tom Dow has a PhD in literature from Loyola University, Michael McGuire holds an MA in rhetoric and composition from Northeastern Illinois University, and Troy Swanson holds a PhD in community college leadership from Old Dominion University and holds a Masters of Library and Information Science from Dominican University. This blend of academic training and experience brings very different (and often competing) perspectives on writing, which adds to the lively conversation of the book itself Pedagog The book teaches by example. It models effective writing in a variety of ways while addressing the subject of writing itself. It models writing and research, quite literally, through a conversation of ideas. The text also features chapter summaries, focus boxes to highlight key points, and a comprehensive index to make it easy for readers to locate typical (and less typical) topics in writing as they are addressed throughout the conversation of the text. The book can be read in sequence from beginning to end, by chapter (in any order), or by writing topic as located through the table of contents and index. The brief response pieces are quite effective for classroom teaching as they seem to predict many questions, comments, and challenges raised by students. These response pieces are short enough to read in the classroom and offer a springboard to rich conversation
"The Handbook of Reading Research is the research handbook for the field. Each volume has come to define the field for the period of time it covers ... When taken as a set, the four volumes provide a definitive history of reading research"--Back of cover, volume 4.
Writing Out Loud I love writing. To watch words magically appear across the blank screen of a white page is a very enjoyable experience. For a while I wasnt really sure if I loved the craft enough. I remember the passion I had for it when I was younger and the seeds were first sown, and the sprouts of imagination unfurled themselves to push their way up through the hard soil and grit of grammar, and between the cracks of writers block. In those days I feasted on writing as if it were a final meal or some forbidden fruit I had never tasted before. Locked away in the hot, shadowy comfort of my attic room, Id sit hunched for hours over the small keyboard of my older brothers portable grey typewriter, plotting and pecking out the drama of make-believe lives. I think thats what I love most about writing. The fact that I get to fool around with history, that of others as well as my own; that I get to weave it into a pattern of a whole other reality and come up with a garment of my own design. For me, words are too powerful and too precious to be given in complaint. I dont think we really understand how potent and complicated it is to speak and write them. If we did, then we would probably recognize that Hate is too harsh a word to use in reference to diets and exercise and TV shows we dislikeand especially towards people. And that Love is too prized a sentiment to be so casually attached to our favorite foods and movies. Writing Out Loud is a passionate exploration of the world through various avenues of literary expression. From essays and prose, poetry and journaling. It is an understanding of how ones life is edified and made whole through the act of writing, and its power in helping us make sense of our place on the planet. As the author explains: When I writewhen I captured my thoughts on paperI take them from the realm of my imagination and make them more real. All the incomplete pieces of who I am or imagine myself to be come together in a more coherent shape. In writing I am made whole.
A New York Times Notable Book Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award A personal, lyrical narrative about storytelling and empathy, from the author of Orwell's Roses Apricots. Her mother's disintegrating memory. An invitation to Iceland. Illness. These are Rebecca Solnit's raw materials, but The Faraway Nearby goes beyond her own life, as she spirals out into the stories she heard and read—from fairy tales to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein—that helped her navigate her difficult passge. Solnit takes us into the lives of others—an arctic cannibal, the young Che Guevara among the leprosy afflicted, a blues musician, an Icelandic artist and her labyrinth—to understand warmth and coldness, kindness and imagination, decay and transformation, making art and making self. This captivating, exquisitely written exploration of the forces that connect us and the way we tell our stories is a tour de force of association, a marvelous Russian doll of a book that is a fitting companion to Solnit's much-loved A Field Guide to Getting Lost.
In Conversation with Exercises helps you think critically about why you’re writing and who you’re writing to while preparing you for all the kinds of writing you need to do.
When you Read Like a Writer (RLW) you work to identify some of the choices the author made so that you can better understand how such choices might arise in your own writing. The idea is to carefully examine the things you read, looking at the writerly techniques in the text in order to decide if you might want to adopt similar (or the same) techniques in your writing. You are reading to learn about writing. Instead of reading for content or to better understand the ideas in the writing (which you will automatically do to some degree anyway), you are trying to understand how the piece of writing was put together by the author and what you can learn about writing by reading a particular text. As you read in this way, you think about how the choices the author made and the techniques that he/she used are influencing your own responses as a reader. What is it about the way this text is written that makes you feel and respond the way you do?
