Janet Burroway

Elizabeth Stuckey-French

Explores the elements of fiction, providing practical writing techniques and examples. Written in a tone that is personal and non-prescriptive, this book encourages students to develop proficiency through each step of the writing process. It also integrates diverse, contemporary short stories in every chapter.

A Guide to Narrative Craft

Writing Fiction

When four million wasps descend on the town of Itching Down, the residents make a giant strawberry jam sandwich to trap them.

The Giant Jam Sandwich

the elements of craft

Imaginative writing

ALERT: Before you purchase, check with your instructor or review your course syllabus to ensure that you select the correct ISBN. Several versions of Pearson's MyLab & Mastering products exist for each title, including customized versions for individual schools, and registrations are not transferable. In addition, you may need a CourseID, provided by your instructor, to register for and use Pearson's MyLab & Mastering products. Packages Access codes for Pearson's MyLab & Mastering products may not be included when purchasing or renting from companies other than Pearson; check with the seller before completing your purchase. Used or rental books If you rent or purchase a used book with an access code, the access code may have been redeemed previously and you may have to purchase a new access code. Access codes Access codes that are purchased from sellers other than Pearson carry a higher risk of being either the wrong ISBN or a previously redeemed code. Check with the seller prior to purchase. -- For courses in Introduction to Creative Writing or Creative Writing in English or Creative Writing Departments. Written by bestselling author Janet Burroway, Imaginative Writing, covers all four genres: creative nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and drama. This textbook discusses elements of craft common to all creative writing before delving into the individual genres. After an introduction, the next five chapters each investigate a specific element of craft--Image, Voice, Character, Setting, and Story--from a perspective that crosses all genres. Nearly half of the selections in all four genres are new. New "Try This" exercises give students plenty of practice. Imaginative Writing is a very popular book for courses on teaching the craft of creative writing.

Imaginative Writing

Ned Stuckey-French

The most widely used and respected text in its field, Writing Fiction, 7e by novelists Janet Burroway and Elizabeth Stuckey-French guides the novice story writer from first inspiration to final revision by providing practical writing techniques and concrete examples. Written in a tone that is personal and non-prescriptive, the text encourages students to develop proficiency through each step of the writing process, offering an abundance of exercises designed to spur writing and creativity. The text also integrates diverse contemporary short stories in every chapter in the belief that the reading of inspiring fiction goes hand-in-hand with the writing of fresh and exciting stories.

International Edition

Writing Fiction : A Guide to Narrative Craft

A cumulative rhyme recounts the efforts of a circus troop to move their stranded circus truck off the railroad track.

The Truck on the Track

Janet Burroway followed in the footsteps of Sylvia Plath. Like Plath, she was an earlyMademoiselle guest editor in New York, an Ivy League and Cambridge student, an aspiring poet-playwright-novelist in the period before feminism existed, a woman who struggled with her generation's conflicting demands of work and love. Unlike Plath, Janet Burroway survived. In sixteen essays of wit, rage, and reconciliation, Embalming Mom chronicles loss and renaissance in a life that reaches from Florida to Arizona across to England and home again. Burroway brilliantly weaves her way through the dangers of daily life—divorcing her first husband, raising two boys, establishing a new life, scattering her mother's ashes and sorting the meager possessions of her father. Each new danger and challenge highlight the tenacious will of the body and spirit to heal. “Ordinary life is more dangerous than war because nobody survives,” Burroway contemplates in the essay “Danger and Domesticity,” yet each of her meditations reminds us that it's our daily rituals and trials that truly keep us alive.

Essays in Life

Embalming Mom

Opening Nights

In 1955, Maxine Kumin submitted a poem to the Saturday Evening Post. “Lines on a Half-Painted House” made it into the magazine—but not before Kumin was asked to produce, via her husband’s employer, verification that the poem was her original work. Kumin, who went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, was part of a groundbreaking generation of women writers who came of age during the midcentury feminist movement. By challenging the status quo and ultimately finding success for themselves, they paved the way for future generations of writers. In A Story Larger than My Own, Janet Burroway brings together Kumin, Julia Alvarez, Jane Smiley, Erica Jong, and fifteen other accomplished women of this generation to reflect on their writing lives. The essays and poems featured in this collection illustrate that even writers who achieve critical and commercial success experience a familiar pattern of highs and lows over the course of their careers. Along with success comes the pressure to sustain it, as well as a constant search for subject matter, all too frequent crises of confidence, the challenges of a changing publishing scene, and the difficulty of combining writing with the ordinary stuff of life—family, marriage, jobs. The contributors, all now over the age of sixty, also confront the effects of aging, with its paradoxical duality of new limitations and newfound freedom. Taken together, these stories offer advice from experience to writers at all stages of their careers and serve as a collective memoir of a truly remarkable generation of women.

Women Writers Look Back on Their Lives and Careers

A Story Larger than My Own

Janet Burroway's bestselling Imaginative Writng: The Elements of Craft explores the craft of creative writing in four genres: Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Creative Nonfiction. A trade author as well as a professor of creative writing, Burroway brings her years of teaching and writing to this book. "Try-This" exercises appear throughout each chapter. Provocative and fun, these exercises help writers develop the specific writing skills discussed within the text. “Working toward a draft” exercises encourage writers to develop their ideas into complete drafts. In response to reviewer requests, the preface “Invitation to the Writer” has been expanded into a full chapter. This new chapter introduces writers to important skills such as reading like a writer, journaling, and participating in the writer's workshop. This book offers lots of ideas and encouragement at a great price!

The Elements of Craft

John Vernon Lord

When four million wasps fly into their village, the citizens of Itching Down devise a way of getting rid of them.

Jonathan Shay

The mother of a private contractor who carried out humanitarian work during the Iraq War traces the life of her son and the circumstances that led to his suicide in April 2004.

The Life and Death of an American Contractor in Iraq

Losing Tim

Dana, the widow of a senator, sells her home in Pennsylvania and retraces her roots in the south, where she reconnects with Cassius Huston, but after being threatened by Cassius's African-American family, Dana flees to the Gulf Coast where she finally finds herself in a place and culture she never could have anticipated.

Bridge of Sand

When four million wasps fly into the town of Itching Down the townspeople decide to make a giant jam sandwich to trap them.

Janet Burroway

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