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Book Club for Writers
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Sign up todayThe Writing Life
Narrator
Tavia Gilbert
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Length
2 hours 37 minutes
Language
English
With color, irony, and sensitivity, Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Dillard illuminates the dedication, absurdity, and daring that is the writer's life. As it probes and exposes, examines and analyzes,The Writing Lifeoffers deeper insight into one of the most mysterious of professions.
A gregarious recluse, Dillard has passed many days, weeks, and months in remote locations doing something she claims to hate: writing. The act of writing is quite the undertaking, as the author struggles to decide whether she has found her subject, hit a dead end, or come up with a truly inspired bit of literature. Here, on top of providing a glimpse into her own life and writing experiences, Dillard offers wisdom to aspiring and established writers, urging them to maintain their passion and commitment to the work.
Annie Dillard is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, An American Childhood, The Writing Life, The Living and The Maytrees. She is a member of the Academy of Arts and Letters and has received fellowship grants from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Tavia Gilbert has recorded hundreds of titles across a wide span of genres, including Erica Spindler romantic thrillers, John Scalzi science fiction, Jeaniene Frost fantasy. She received four Audies nominations and won three Audiofile Earphones Awards for titles The Obituary Writer, Sing Them Home and The Day of the Pelican. In addition to voice acting, Gilbert is an accomplished producer, singer and theater actor.
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Reviews
“The Writing Life is as slim and potent as the Tao Te Ching, that ancient Chinese manual on the art of living…You want to copy out what it says, tape it to your typewriter, fix it with a heavy magnet to your fridge. Her words give courage. They make the daring life seem worthwhile.”
“For nonwriters, it is a glimpse into the trials and satisfactions of a life spent with words. For writers, it is a warm, rambling conversation with a stimulating and extraordinarily talented colleague.”
“Annie Dillard is a wonderful writer, and The Writing Life is full of joys.”
“A kind of spiritual Strunk & White, a small and brilliant guidebook to the landscape of a writer’s task…Dillard brings the same passion and connective intelligence to this narrative as she has to her other work.”
“The Writing Life is a spare volume…that has the power and force of a detonating bomb…A book bursting with metaphors and prose bristling with incident.”
“Her book is…scattered with pearls. Each reader will be attracted to different bright parts…Gracefully and simply told, these little stories illuminate the writing life…Her advice to writers is encouraging and invigorating.”
“In this collection of short essays, the author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and An American Childhood probes the sorcery that levitates her own writing, discussing with clear eye and wry wit how, where, and why she writes.”
“Pulitzer Prize–winning author Annie Dillard whimsically explores the process of writing, delving fearlessly into the subconscious and offering practical wisdom…Gilbert imparts Dillard’s examination of the creative process and the heights and depths of an author’s daily struggle with words in a way that exalts.”
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