A profile of the late short-story master analyzes the myths and controversies attributed to his character and covers his struggles with alcohol, the role of a zealous editor in shaping his first collections, and his ability to portray the challenges of ordinary people.

A memoir of the writer responsible for the avant-garde Against Interpretation depicts her as a magnetic, outsized personality and a polarizing presence who made being an intellectual a glamorous occupation.

"Susan Sontag (1933?2004) was one of America's first celebrity intellectuals. In the first biography to be published since her death, Daniel Schreiber portrays a glamorous woman full of contradictions and inner conflicts, whose life mirrored the cultural upheavals of her time. While known primarily as a cultural critic and novelist, Sontag was also a filmmaker, stage director, and dramatist. It was her status as a pop icon that was unusual for an...

"Pat Conroy's memoirs and autobiographical novels contain a great deal about his life, but there is much he hasn't revealed to readers--until now. My Exaggerated Life is the product of a special collaboration between this great American author and oral biographer Katherine Clark, who recorded two hundred hours of conversations with Conroy before he passed away in 2016. In the spring and summer of 2014, the two spoke for an hour or more on the phone...

"Home is a loaded word, a complex idea: it's a place that can be comforting, difficult, nourishing, war-torn, or political. In this breathtaking, thought-provoking collection, 30 women writers explore the theme in personal essays about neighbors, marriage, kids, sentimental objects, homelessness, domestic violence, solitude, immigration, gentrification, geography, and more. Contributors--including Amanda Petrusich, Naomi Jackson, Jane Wong, and Jennifer...

A chronicle of the author's hardscrabble childhood in rural western New York State describes the family members, first friendships, and early experiences with death that shaped her literary career.

Contains observations about life and descriptions of nature as described by Steinbeck as he traveled from coast to coast at sixty years of age with his French poodle, Charley.

"In this memoir, celebrated author, historian, and activist Rebecca Solnit relates how she found her voice as a writer and as a feminist during the 1980s in San Francisco, in an atmosphere of gender violence on the street and the exclusion of women from cultural arenas. Then in her early twenties, Solnit tells of being poor, hopeful, and adrift in the city, which became her great teacher; of the small apartment she found, which became a home in which...

The author relates incidents in his life and how they inspired parts of his books about the character, Brian Robeson.