The best writing on writing / edited by Jack Heffron.

Includes index.

Passing the Torch / Candyce Barnes -- The Books Not Read, the Lines Not Written: A Poet Confronts His Mortality / Donald Hall -- Breaking the "Rules" of Story Structure / Diane Lefer -- With a Little Help From My Friends / Tony Kushner -- Criss-Crossed With Stories / Josip Novakovich -- Someone Is Writing a Poem / Adrienne Rich -- Your Mother's Passions, Your Sister's Woes: Writing About the Living / Bonnie Friedman -- Letter to a Young Article Writer / Donald M. Murray -- The Literature of Personal Disaster / Nancy Mairs -- How to Tell a True Story / Margot Livesey -- I Dreamed the Story of a Dream / Allan Gurganus -- Lessons of a Lifetime / James Michener -- Women and Biography / Carolyn G. Heilbrun -- Where Characters Come From / Ann Beattie -- The Screenwriter's Lexicon / David Freeman -- Inglish: Writing With an Accent / Ayanna Black -- Why Stories Fail / Ben Nyberg -- Mistakes People Make About Poetry / James Fenton -- Nonfiction in First Person, Without Apology / Natalia Rachel Singer -- Death of the Western / William Kittredge -- On Playwriting / Edward Albee -- It's a Bad Time Out There for Emotion / Edna O'Brien -- The Writing of "Adjusting to the Light" and "An August Evening Outside of Nashville" / Miller Williams -- The Way We Write Now: The Reality of AIDS in Contemporary Short Fiction / Sharon Oard Warner -- Better and Sicker / Lorrie Moore -- Imagining What You Don't Know / Paula Fox -- My Father's Place / Kim R. Stafford.