Reaching Inside

An anthology of original essays by fifty major American writers on one hundred essential short stories.

"A writer," Nobel Prize winner Saul Bellow once said, "is a reader who is moved to emulation." That idea inspired New York Times bestselling novelist and memoirist Andre Dubus III to invite fifty acclaimed authors to write about the precise alchemy of emulation, about short stories that altered their view of life and their place in it-short stories that, ultimately, made them want to write something substantial themselves. Reaching Inside is the far-ranging end result of that invitation.

For practitioners of the personal essay and other forms of creative nonfiction, this anthology is fifty examples of how to write about the "I" as well as the "eye." For teachers of creative writing, it is fifty inspiring songs of praise for the kind of writing that aspires to art. For professors of literature, it is fifty models for how to think and write critically. And for readers, Reaching Inside is simply a moving and inspiring anthology of masterful essays that reach inside us and, as Tolstoy wrote, "transfer feeling from one person's heart to another person's heart."

The contributors are T.C. Boyle, Russell Banks, Richard Bausch, Robert Boswell, Charles Baxter, Ann Beattie, Madison Smartt Bell, Ron Carlson, Lan Samantha Chang, Michael Cunningham, Junot Diaz, Anthony Doerr, Emma Donoghue, Stuart Dybek, Dagoberto Gilb, Julia Glass, Mary Gordon, Lauren Groff, Jennifer Haigh, Jane Hamilton, Ron Hansen, Paul Harding, Ann Hood, Pam Houston, Gish Jen, Charles Johnson, Phil Klay, Dennis Lehane, Lois Lowry, Colum McCann, Sue Miller, Rick Moody, Antonya Nelson, Bich Nguyen, Joyce Carol Oates, Stewart O'Nan, Peter Orner, ZZ Packer, Ann Patchett, Edith Pearlman, Jayne Ann Phillips, Kirstin Valdez Quade, Anna Quindlen, Ron Rash, Richard Russo, Dani Shapiro, Mona Simpson, Jess Walter, Tobias Wolff, and Meg Wolitzer.

Reaching Inside will remind you why you fell in love with reading.