Nonfiction Essays

African American literature is the body of literature produced in the United States by writers of African descent. It begins with the works of such late 18th-century writers as Phillis Wheatley. Before the high point of enslaved people narratives, African-American literature was dominated by autobiographical spiritual narratives. The genre known as slave narratives in the 19th century were accounts by people who had generally escaped from slavery, about their journeys to freedom and ways they claimed their lives.

These 75 flash nonfiction pieces, written by internationally celebrated women authors and dazzlingly hilarious newcomers, are no flashes in the pan: They provide a feast of insights, generously garnished with wit, spice, and an exhilarating attention to craft. In Fast Funny Women, you'll find everything you want from thoughtful essays in a short, delicious form. Perfect for students of writing, writers of humor, and all fans who welcome laughter, insight, and perspective into their lives.

An essay that presents theories of time and healing.

With a foreword by Neil Gaiman Terry Pratchett has earned a place in the hearts of readers the world over with his bestselling Discworld series – but in recent years he has become equally well-known and respected as an outspoken campaigner for causes including Alzheimer’s research and animal rights.

Helen Garner visits the morgue, and goes cruising on a Russian ship. She sees women giving birth, and gets the sack for teaching her students about sex. She attends a school dance and a gun show. She writes about dreaming, about turning 50 and the storm caused by The First Stone. Her story on the murder of the two-year-old Daniel Valerio wins her a Walkley Award.

The View from the Cheap Seats draws together, for the first time ever, myriad nonfiction writing by international phenomenon and Sunday Times best-selling author Neil Gaiman. From Make Good Art, the speech he gave at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia that went viral, to pieces on artists and legends including Terry Pratchett, Lou Reed and Ray Bradbury, the collection offers a glimpse into the head and heart of one of the most acclaimed writers of our time.

Alexander Chee, an essayist of “virtuosity and power” (Washington Post), selects twenty essays out of thousands that represent the best examples of the form published the previous year.

We will teach you how to write creative nonfiction in seven easy steps. This guide is designed to provide you with all the tools you need in a concise, easy-to-understand format that will answer all your burning questions and get you on your way to successful nonfiction writing.

Gary Janetti, the writer and producer for some of the most popular television comedies of all time, and creator of one of the most wickedly funny Instagram accounts there is, now turns his skills into a hilarious, and poignant audiobook chronicling the pains and indignities of everyday life. Gary spends his 20s in New York, dreaming of starring on soap operas while in reality working at a hotel where he lusts after an unattainable colleague and battles a bellman who despises it when people actually use a bell to call him.

Known for his meaty seriocomic novels–expansive works that are simultaneously lowbrow and highbrow–Tom Robbins has also published over the years a number of short pieces, predominantly nonfiction. His travel articles, essays, and tributes to actors, musicians, sex kittens, and thinkers have appeared in publications ranging from Esquire to Harper’s, from Playboy to the New York Times, High Times, and Life.

This audiobook includes unabridged recordings of all George Orwell's greatest non-fiction: three full-length books, a collection of his most well-renowned essays and the complete collection of his poetry.

From drawing a map of a remembered neighborhood to signing a form releasing yourself to take risks in your work, Roorbach offers innovative techniques that will trigger ideas for all writers. Writing Life Stories is a classic text that appears on countless creative nonfiction and composition syllabi the world over. This updated 10th anniversary edition gives you the same friendly instruction and stimulating exercises along with updated information on current memoir writing trends, ethics, internet research, and even marketing ideas.

Encompassing themes of race, education, fame, law, and America’s past and future, these essays are James Alan McPherson at his most prescient and invaluable. Born in segregated 1940s Georgia, McPherson graduated from Harvard Law School only to give up law and become a writer. In 1978, he became the first Black author to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. But all the while, McPherson was also writing and publishing nonfiction that stand beside contemporaries such as James Baldwin and Joan Didion, as this collection amply proves.

New York Times bestselling author Jim Harrison (1937-2016) was a writer with a poet’s economy of style and trencherman’s appetites and ribald humor. In The Search for the Genuine, a collection of new and previously published essays, the giant of letters muses on everything from grouse hunting and fishing to Zen Buddhism and matters of the spirit, including reported pieces on Yellowstone and shark-tagging in the open ocean, commentary on writers from Bukowski to Neruda to Peter Matthiessen, and a heartbreaking essay on life on the US/Mexico border.

This audiobook includes unabridged recordings of Leo Tolstoy's 4 greatest works of non-fiction in one audiobook. The essays included here are: What is Art?, The Inevitable Revolution, The Kingdom of God Is Within You, A Confession.

Writing in the grand American tradition of Annie Dillard and Barry Lopez, Donovan Hohn is an "adventurous, inquisitive, and brightly illuminating writer" (New York Times). Since the publication of Moby-Duck a decade ago, Hohn has been widely hailed for his prize-winning essays on the borderlands between the natural and the human. The Inner Coast collects 10 of his best, many of them originally published in such magazines as the New York Times Magazine and Harper's.

In a book that begins with a series of lynchings and ends with a series of apologies, Eula Biss explores race in America. Her response to the topic is informed by the experiences chronicled in these essays - teaching in a Harlem school on the morning of 9/11, reporting for an African American newspaper in San Diego, watching the aftermath of Katrina from a college town in Iowa, and settling in Chicago’s most diverse neighborhood.

Compilation of Essays and Paragraphs for College and University Students is that rare English book that can actually help students to write coherently and logically about many topics and subjects. Compilation of Essays and Paragraphs for College and University Students has been put together and designed as a complete and a comprehensive book for helping young and adult learners in college to write and understand the structure of essays and paragraphs. This book is unique because every essay talks about something that is real in this life.

Writers are witnesses and scribes to society’s conscience but writing about social issues in the twenty-first century requires a new, sharper toolkit. Craft and Conscience helps writers weave together their narrative craft, analytical and research skills, and their conscience to create prose which makes us feel the individual and collective impact of crucial issues of our time. Kavita Das guides writers to take on nuanced perspectives and embrace intentionality through a social justice lens.

Whenever the subject of Lincoln is brought up, it usually produces a mixed response ranging from adoration to excoriation. Back in 1931 when Lincoln the Man appeared, there were few willing to publicly judge Lincoln on the basis of anything less than hagiographic platitudes. That all changed when the famous poet and writer Edgar Lee Masters published Lincoln the Man. This book is less a biography and more of an analysis of Lincoln’s thinking process and political evolution from backwoods lawyer to president of the United States.