One of the most stressful aspects of college applications is the essay. Most students worry about what an admissions officer looks for in a writing sample. But that’s the wrong way to approach this vital component, says former Ivy League college admissions officer Harry Bauld. At Brown and Columbia, he saw what prospective students often did wrong—and now tells you how to do it right.In this fully revised and updated edition of the classic college application guide to writing the b...

The author of The End of Absence shares a "gorgeously written and fascinating" inquiry into the transformative power of being alone (Michael Finkel, New York Times best-selling author of True Story).The capacity to be alone, properly alone, is one of life's subtlest skills. Real solitude is a crucial ingredient for a rich interior life. It inspires reflection, allows creativity to flourish, and improves our relationships with ourselves and...

Meetings are the bane of many a work life. Theyre boring, unfocused, too long, and just plain ineffective. But all of this can be cured. It just takes some organization, technique, and common sense. In fact, meetings can be turned into incredible engines for results and morale. Heres how its done.

A classic handbook for anyone who needs to write, Writing With Power speaks to everyone who has wrestled with words while seeking to gain power with them. Here, Peter Elbow emphasizes that the essential activities underlying good writing and the essential exercises promoting it are really not difficult at all. Employing a cookbook approach, Elbow provides the reader (and writer) with various recipes: for getting words down on paper, for revising, for dealing with an audience, for ...

Award winning essayist Scott Russell Sanders once compared the art of essay writing to "the pursuit of mental rabbits"-a rambling through thickets of thought in search of some brief glimmer of fuzzy truth. While some people persist in the belief that essays are stuffy and antiquated, the truth is that the personal essay is an ever-changing creative medium that provides an ideal vehicle for satisfying the human urge to document truths as we experience them and share them with others-to capt...

For more than a quarter of a century, Pat Schneider has helped writers find and liberate their true voices. She has taught all kinds--the award winning, the struggling, and those who have been silenced by poverty and hardship. Her innovative methods have worked in classrooms from elementary to graduate level, in jail cells and public housing projects, in convents and seminaries, in youth at-risk programs, and with groups of the terminally ill. Now, in Writing Alone and with Others, Schneid...

Tutoring today is a $4 billion industry (yes—billion) with companies like Sylvan Learning Center and Kaplan Tutoring cashing in. So, what are parents of today’s overextended students to do? Top professional tutor Marina Koestler Ruben empowers you to take a do-it-yourself approach to your child’s after-school enrichment. As a parent-tutor, you will learn how provide holistic academic support for your children and create an intellectual environment in the home—strengthening your re...

How to Make Memories into Memoirs, Ideas into Essays, and Life into LiteratureFrom 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 f...

The material is right there in front of you. You’ve known yourself for, well, a lifetime—and you finally feel ready to share your story with the world. Yet when it actually comes time to put pen to paper, you find that you’re stumped.Enter Adair Lara: award-winning author, seasoned columnist, beloved writing coach, and the answer to all of your autobiographical quandaries.Naked, Drunk, and Writing is the culmination of Lara’s vast experience as a writer, editor, an...

In praise of the greatest job in the world...The right book at the right time: an impassioned defense of teachers and why we need them now more than ever.Teacher turned teacher’s advocate Taylor Mali inspired millions with his original poem “What Teachers Make,” a passionate and unforgettable response to a rich man at a dinner party who sneeringly asked him what teachers make. Mali’s sharp, funny, perceptive look at life in the cla...

From the bestselling author of Woe Is I: A guide to grammar fundamentals that's sympathetic to the struggling writer and often just plain funny" ( The Seattle Times).Whether you need to improve your skills for work or school, or aspire to the Great American Novel, a grounding in grammar, spelling, and punctuation is essential—not just to make you look like a professional but to communicate effectively in emails, essays, or anything you need to wri...

The PEN Award-winning author "proffers advice for journal keepers who want to develop material for later books or who simply enjoy logging life's events" ( Publishers Weekly).Leaving A Trace is a practical guide to keeping a journal successfully and transforming it into future projects. Each chapter features both narrative and tailored exercises for beginning and committed diarists. Beginners will turn first to quick ways to overcome inhibitions, g...