Tell It Slant

Publisher's Note: Products purchased from Third Party sellers are not guaranteed by the publisher for quality, authenticity, or access to any online entitlements included with the product. Two award-winning authors reveal everything you need to know to develop your own distinctive voice and craft compelling, creative nonfiction “Tell all the Truth but tell it Slant.” —Emily Dickinson With these words, Dickinson offers sound advice for nonfiction writers: Tell the truth but become more than mere transcribers of daily life. Since 2003, Tell It Slant has set the standard for creative nonfiction instruction, showing writers how to move beyond mere facts and, instead, make the most of their own “slant” on the world. This revised and updated third edition offers: • New and expanded chapters on writing about identity, maintaining a productive work/life balance, and navigating the publishing industry • An anthology with diverse pieces that range from traditional essay to the graphic memoir • Expanded discussion of contemporary and emerging literary forms • New “Try It” writing exercises throughout the book Whether planning a course or learning on your own, Tell It Slant provides everything you need to know to develop a distinctive voice and to craft compelling creative nonfiction. This book provides the basis for a complete education in nonfiction writing, wherever your classroom might be. “Tell It Slant is a valuable and comprehensive resource for nonfiction writers, filled with exhilarating examples, powerful exercises, and pure inspiration. Miller and Paola are gifted teachers and writers with endless wisdom to share and a lovely way of sharing it with struggling writers at every level.” —Dinty W. Moore, author of The Mindful Writer: Noble Truths of the Writing Life

Creative nonfiction is the fastest-growing segment in the writing market. Yet, the majority of writing guides are geared toward poetry and fiction writers. Tell It Slant fills the gap. Designed for aspiring nonfiction writers, this much-needed reference provides practical guidance, writing exercises, and a detailed discussion of the range of subcategories that make up the genre, including memoir, travel writing, investigative reporting, and more.

Eugene Peterson considers the words of the Word made flesh. His probing of the parables and prayers of Jesus will inform and inspire all who love the Gospels. He explores the common speech of the Bible, and carefully exercises God's gift of language so that Jesus' words of storytelling and prayer "dazzle us with truth."

An accessible and personable guide to writing creative nonfiction

"The body knows a language the mind never wholly masters." In this remarkable debut collectionessentially a memoir in essay formBrenda Miller creates an autobiography that locates her body as its central reference point. Single and unable to bear children of her own, Miller details a life in relationship to the extended human family, a journey that traverses realms physical, emotional, and spiritual. From her training in massage and reflexology, to her volunteer work in a hospitals infant ward, Miller remains a constant seeker and humble teacher. Raised in a suburban Jewish household in the sixties, Miller grows up to find herself sitting in meditation for hours at a time, both bemused and intrigued by Buddhist precepts. Or she engages in her own ironic brand of mindfulness while caring for two little girls or attending the birth of her godson. She brings us to Portugal, Syria, Israel, and the deserts of southern Utah, but these are no mere travelogues: they become, instead, maps by which to navigate the intricate maze of our lives. These personal essays vary from the lyric to the narrative to the humorous, but always we warm to Millers authentic voice as she explores personal joys and heartbreaks within a larger domain. Organically shaped, never forced, these award-winning essays arrive with the pleasant snap of physical detail and leave with unforgettable insights on birth, prayer, and human resilience. Nurturing, yet uncommonly honest, Season of the Body articulates the unspoken losses, the desires held deep in the mute chambers of the heart.

''A picture tells a thousand words" Many can benefit from the pearls that Jordan Peterson shares and many have found incredible inspiration in his teachings, but not everyone will tune in to lengthy lectures. If you have been heartened by Peterson's work and looking for a modality that might capture the interest of someone you know, this may be the right gift! Peterson describes a hallmark of truth, saying "it snaps things together....You have a nature, and when you feel that nature articulated, it's like the act of snapping the puzzle pieces together." In this work, the goal is to facilitate that type of revelation, by pairing compelling quotations with visual images which can then be colored! Using humor, word play and creative visual renderings, this work will unlock insight into self and other, detonating truth bombs that let readers peek into the infrastructure of reality and access some of the fascinating insights that underpin Jordan Peterson's worldview. In a resource designed to inspire growth, learning - and a cleaner room - the author provides an inroad, allowing readers to access teachings that have, to date, catalyzed many. Coloring books allow readers to reflect and focus, building concentration skills, this in an age characterized by distraction, busyness and skimming. The coloring book modality is designed to bring quiet back into life. As a modality, it also reinforces Peterson's message: 'what if you attended to each detail in your life like it mattered. Imagine what that outcome would look like!' Once introduced to memorable quotes and concepts, readers can follow up by watching Peterson's lectures. Additional journaling pages are provided for those who further explore Peterson's work to curate content, recording quotes as they come upon them. Annette Poizner, MSW, Ed.D., is a clinical social worker, therapist and community educator who has written extensively on the work and worldview of Dr. Jordan B. Peterson. Among the books she has written about the work of Jordan Peterson is Finding One Self: A Teenager's Guide to Jordan Peterson's Rules for Life. That book provides young readers with an accessible treatment of many of the rules that Peterson discusses. Lobster University Press, publishes short volumes which unpack ideas introduced by Dr. Jordan Peterson in his talks and books. The materials published are designed to help people better integrate the material and tweak that most important of abilities: the capacity to "turn chaos into habitable order!" These works will be the product of discourse and exchange with others interested in Peterson's work, as we continue to mine the depth of his opus and explore interesting and helpful applications.

Honored as one of "10 Favorite Books of 2014" —Dwight Garner, The New York Times Honored as a "Standout Book of 2014" —American Poet magazine “Belieu oscillates between dark humor, self-consciousness, and pointed satire in a fourth collection that’s equal-opportunity in its critique. In the world of these poems, no one is innocent; everyone is confined to the complexity, absurdity, and, above all, fallibility of their human condition…. Anchoring the work is a conversational, lyrical speaker willing to implicate herself as part of the political and social constructs she criticizes, as when she depicts a Southern American culture still reeling from its history of social injustice, and even the Civil War: “Don’t tell us/ history. Nobody hearts a cemetery/ like we do.” It’s a fantastic collection; Belieu desires not to dress issues up but confront them.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review “A smart and nettling book of poems — about love, sex, social class and our free-floating anxieties — from a writer who is a comedian of the human spirit. Her crisp free verse has as many subcurrents as a magnetic field.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times "Politics, pop culture, and parenthood appear here along with reflections on our collective moments of hypocrisy and hope. '12-Step,' one of the most resonant entries, begins innocuously with a meditation about lighthouses, then the speaker gathers speed and confidence and reaches a risky but profound one-word stanza—'myself'—before ending with a haunting inversion of the Serenity Prayer used by Alcoholics Anonymous. Amid the quips and the elegant observations about immortality, Belieu's speakers never forget their responsibilities, or their possibilities." —Booklist "From poem to poem in the smart, savvy Slant Six, Belieu channels an updated American idiom, one of stubborn in-betweenhood. Like the plain-spoken poetry that plumbed the depths of American consciousness in the 20th century, Belieu trawls the shallows of today’s America and finds just as much caught in its oily reflections as in its murkier subcurrents. It’s '[b]etter,' she suggests, 'to forget perfection.'" —The Boston Globe “I’ve never read a poem by Erin Belieu that I didn’t want to immediately rip from its bindings so I could fold it up and carry around in my pockets and read so many times that the paper turned back into pulp. She’s just that good. That honest and brave and beautiful and wise and funny. She writes poems we need. Poems that say who I am and who you are and how and why we got to be this way. Poems that wonder if we can ever change. Poems that know us and show us and grace us. Poems that remember us and forget us and leave us dazzled in their dust. In Slant Six, she’s outdone herself. It’s a spellbinding, heart-opening beauty of a book.” —Cheryl Strayed "Erin Belieu . . . is always ready to surprise, to astonish, and, ultimately, to defy comparison."—Boston Book Review "[One] of America's finest poets."—Robert Olen Butler Erin Belieu's fourth collection, Slant Six, is an inundation of the humor and horror in contemporary American life—from the last saltine cracked in the sleeve, to the kitty-cat calendar in an office cubicle. With its prophecies of impending destruction, and a simultaneous flood of respect for Americans, Erin Belieu's poems close like Ziploc bags around a human heart. From "12-Step": I am considering lighthouses in a completely new light— their butch neutrality, their grand but modest surfaces. A lighthouse could appear here at any moment. I have been making this effort, placing myself in uncomfortable positions, only for the documented health benefits . . .