The Fiction Editor, the Novel, and the Novelist

Thomas McCormack

Trade Paper, 167 pp., $12.00
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Retail: $14.95. BACKLIST SALE PRICE $12.00

Drawing upon 28 years of experience as the CEO and Editorial Director of St. Martin's Press, Thomas McCormack gives practical guidance about how to plan, write, and revise a novel. A standard reference for editors since its first publication in 1988, The Fiction Editor has also become popular with writers beca . . . [read more]

The Metalogicon

John of Salisbury

Trade Paper, 305 pp., $22.95
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Written in 1159 and addressed to Thomas Becket, John of Salisbury's The Metalogicon presents—and defends—a thorough study of the liberal arts of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. The very name "Metalogicon," a coinage by the author, brings together the Greek meta (on behalf of) and logicon (logic or logical studies). Thus, in naming his text, he also . . . [read more]

My Business is Circumference

Edited by Stephen Berg

Trade Paper, 294 pp., $26.95
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Twenty-eight distinguished contemporary American poets provide a multifaceted view of the creative process. Each poet has contributed a poem and chosen several poems by other poets that have influenced it. In an essay, each poet then describes how those influences have led to a sense of poetic mastery.

The Contributors:

• A.R. Ammons
• L.S. Asekoff
• S . . . [read more]

The Secret of Fame

Gabriel Zaid

Translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer

Hardcover, 182 pp., $14.95
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"Gabriel Zaid is a marvelously elegant and playful writer—a cosmopolitan critic with sound judgment and a light touch. He is a jewel of Latin American letters, which is no small thing to be. Read him—you’ll see." —Paul Berman

In So Many B . . . [read more]

Shakespeare's Use of the Arts of Language

Sister Miriam Joseph

Now available in paperback

Hardcover, 423 pp., $34.95
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Grammar-school students in Shakespeare's time were taught to recognize the two hundred figures of speech that Renaissance scholars had derived from Latin and Greek sources (from amphibologia through onomatopoeia to zeugma). This knowledge was one element in their thorough grounding in the liberal arts of logic, grammar, and rhetoric, known as the trivium. In Shakespeare's Use of the Arts of . . . [read more]

So Many Books

Gabriel Zaid

Translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer

Trade Paper, 144 pp., $12.00
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"Reading liberates the reader and transports him from his book to a reading of himself and all of life. It leads him to participate in conversations, and in some cases to arrange them . . . It could even be said that to publish a book is to insert it into the middle of a conversation." —from So Many Books

Join the conversation! In So Many Books, Gabriel . . . [read more]

Style: An Anti-Textbook

Richard A. Lanham

Trade Paper, 212 pp., $14.95
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Why do so many writing courses, with their earnest handbooks and narrow focus on "clarity," bore students and fail to teach them how to write well? Richard Lanham provides answers, and an antidote, in the seven witty and provocative chapters of Style: An Anti-Textbook.

1. THE PROSE PROBLEM AND "THE BOOKS" 2. THE USES
OF OBSCURITY ¤ 3. THE OP . . . [read more]

The Trivium

Sister Miriam Joseph

Edited by Marguerite McGlinn

Trade Paper, 292 pp., $18.95
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The Trivium guides the reader through a clarifying and rigorous account of logic, grammar, and rhetoric. A thorough presentation of general grammar, propositions, syllogisms, enthymemes, fallacies, poetics, figurative language, and metrical discourse — accompanied by lucid graphics and enlivened by examples from Shakespeare, Milton, Plato, and others — makes The Trivium . . . [read more]

Writers on the Air

Donna Seaman

Hardcover, 467 pp., $20.00
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Retail: $24.95. BACKLIST SALE PRICE $20.00

Writers on the Air brings to print for the first time Donna Seaman's vibrant author interviews from her Chicago-based radio program, Open Books. In these conversations, authors discuss their inspirations, their favorite books, their working and research habits. Seaman also connects the author's books with othe . . . [read more]