Dear Writer: Pep Talks & Practical Advice for the Creative Life

Like some seminal texts for writers by writers (Eudora Welty’s One Writer’s Beginnings, Virginia Woolf’s A Letter to a Young Poet), this is at once pure craftsmanship and a glimpse of the gut-wrenching, visceral ways great writers feel the world around them. In 20 essays, poet Smith (You Could Make This Place Beautiful) shares how endlessly expandable the world is for—and to—the writer, and she encourages her readers to trust themselves as they explore this expansiveness with creativity and connection. Each section (attention, wonder, vision, surprise, play, vulnerability, restlessness, connection, tenacity, and hope) begins with a letter or invocation to the reader-as-writer and unfolds with Smith’s signature honesty, showing her struggles and the moments of beauty she finds. She shares handwritten pages and the poems they become throughout, and despite her stature as a poet, it never feels patronizing or exclusionary.