Michael Noll - THE WRITER'S FIELD GUIDE TO THE CRAFT OF FICTION

Join us for a reading and craft talk by Michael Noll of The Writers' League of Texas! Michael will be joined by local author Chris Cander, who will be reading from her forthcoming novel The Weight of A Piano.

Written in a personal, conversational style by Michael Noll, the teacher and writer behind the craft-of-writing blog Read to Write Stories, The Writer's Field Guide brings to the page an approach that has been named a "Favorite Blog" by a literary agent in Publisher's Weekly and is used as a resource in colleges, universities, and high schools around the country.

Excerpts are drawn from the work of bestselling, award-winning literary authors such as T.C. Boyle, Alexander Chee, Marlon James, Karen Russell, George Saunders, Zadie Smith, and Jesmyn Ward and genre writers such as Gillian Flynn, William Gibson, Daniel José Older, and Jennifer Weiner.

The book includes:

1. Exercises and excerpts from 41 authors that focus on common problem-areas for writers, organized into 10 sections:

• Start and Keep Writing
• Make Setting Dramatic
• Create Compelling Characters
• Write Scenes
• Make Dialogue Snap
• Move Through Time and Space
• Create Structure
• Drive Plot Forward
• Develop Your Prose Style
• Put It All Together on Page One

2. Craft essays that draw on Noll's varied and unique experience as a teacher and writer who has moved from being a curious reader on a Kansas hog farm to attending a MFA program and serving as the writer-in-residence at a prestigious literary center to publishing short stories widely and teaching writing workshops in Austin, New Mexico, and online.

3. Literary selections from wide-ranging work by a diverse selection of the most exciting authors publishing today.

4. One-page excerpts from stories and novels that focus on particular aspects of story craft and reveal the mechanics behind the magic of great fiction.

Michael Noll's short stories have been published widely, including in The Best American Mystery Stories anthology, and he has taught for more than a decade at the university level and in independent classes in Austin, New Mexico, and online. At Read to Write Stories, he has interviewed more than 150 authors about the craft behind the work, a wealth of experience that informs The Writer's Field Guide. Michael also interviews authors and other members of the literary community through his work at The Writers’ League of Texas. The entire slate of podcast interviews is available here.