‘The voice of each piece is born on the first page, spilling out slippery and alive’

The best-written recent releases»

‘One of America's finest writers'—Garth Greenwell

1 |

Nobody knows how to write a book. Nobody even knows how to start. Start at the start, says the wag.

2 | For many years the opening line of a story or novel was the first thing I knew, never changing through drafts, though everything else did: chronology, plot, setting, character. My ambition was to end up as an entry in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations. I used to be a librarian; I wanted to appear in a reference book.

That hasn’t happened yet, so I’ve been forced to write my own.

3 | This is a book that dispenses advice, composed by a writer of fiction. As with any such book or craft talk or social media rant or workshop critique, a lot of it is hogwash. I’m talking to myself. That’s all writers really do. Give speeches to the mirror, whisper into a shell on the beach, find a stranger in a dive bar. Teach.

Eventually the odd writer is driven to write a book about writing. Craft books, these volumes are called: chipper, cheerleaderish, generally with an encouraging second-person narrator meant to make the whole exhausting process of writing a book seem possible. You can do it!

It’s a reasonable stance: you’ll never stand on the winner’s podium if you can’t get off the starting block.

But I don’t know if you can write a book. I don’t know if I can write a book. I don’t know if I can write this book, though over the past thirty years I’ve published four novels, three collections of short stories, and a memoir, and have written several more unpublished books. (How many? We won’t speak of that yet.) Everything that I have ever believed was true and immutable about my work has changed. Only certain obsessions remain. A writing life, I’ve come to believe, is a yearslong process of casting away everything you once believed for sure.

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Information about submitting to Auraist is here. Our standards are as high as for our other picks, but if we publish your work, we’ll invite you to answer our questions on prose style. Your answers will be considered for inclusion in the print publication of these answers by many of the world’s best writers.

Nonfiction titles considered this month

Off the Scales by Aimee Donnellan

Love Machines by James Muldoon

A Long Game by Elizabeth McCracken

This, My Second Life by Patrick Charnley

The Score by C. Thi Nguyen

Googoosh: A Sinful Voice by Googoosh with Tara Dehlavi

The Zorg by Siddharth Kara

Killing the Dead by John Blair

Making Mary Poppins by Todd James Pierce

The Divided Mind by Edward Bullmore

Joyride by Susan Orlean

Don’t Burn Anyone at the Stake Today by Naomi Alderman

The Curious Case of Mike Lynch by Katie Prescott

How to Cook a Coyote by Betty Fussell

The Joy of Old Age by Betty Fussell

Invisible Illness: A History, from Hysteria to Long COVID by Emily Mendenhall

Always Carry Salt: A Memoir of Preserving Language and Culture by Samantha Ellis

Fly, Wild Swans: My Mother, Myself and China by Jung Chang

What Do You Do When You’re Lonesome: The Authorized Biography of Justin Townes Earle by Jonathan Bernstein

The Snakes That Ate Florida: Reporting, Essays, and Criticism by Ian Frazier

When Worlds Quake: The Quest to Understand the Interior of Earth and Beyond by Hrvoje Tkalčić

Volga Blues: A Journey into the Heart of Russia