Here you'll find an introduction to related resources available through Kistler Library, including eBooks, databases, literary journals, and more. Contact us with any questions, comments, or recommendations. Click here for more information on Rosemont's MFA in Creative Writing.
You may also want to check out our Publishing Guide.
Some example searches through the Kistler Library catalog. Note: "Books" comprises physical and digital books here.
a) Searching ""art of" graywolf" = 9 results.
b) Searching "kw:(poetry handbook)" with the limit of Books = 136 results.
c) Searching "au="Baxter, Charles" AND au="1947"" = 6 results.
d) Searching "best creative writers" with the limit of Books = 132 results.
A brief note about abbreviations
You can search the library catalog with abbreviations, such as "au." Here are a few abbreviations defined.
au = author kw = keyword su = subject ti = title
Encyclopedias, handbooks, dictionaries and other reference books can be a great place to start your research. They will:
Encyclopedia of Life Writing: Autobiographical and Biographical Forms
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Explores not only autobiography and biography proper, but also letters, diaries, memoirs, family histories, case histories, and other ways in which individual lives have been recorded and structured. It includes entries on genres and subgenres, national and regional traditions from around the world, and important auto-biographical writers, as well as articles on related areas such as oral history, anthropology, testimonies, and the representation of life stories in non-verbal art forms.
Good Word Guide
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This fully updated edition of the bestselling Good Word Guide offers information and advice on spelling, grammar, punctuation, pronunciation, confusables and the latest buzzwords, and provides clear, straightforward answers to everyday language problems.
The American Heritage Guide to Contemporary Usage and Style
This authoritative survey of English usage, grammar, and style offers guidance on almost any writing problem imaginable. Arranged in a single, easy-to-use A-Z list, the guide's entries include examples and quotations that show not only correct and incorrect usage but also the relative effectiveness of different expressions in context.
Penguin Rhyming Dictionary
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Anyone who writes verse, whether lyric poet, songwriter or composer of limericks or jingles, will find this an indispensable reference companion. It offers an astonishingly wide range of suggestions for rhyming words, from the common and everyday to the more difficult and obscure.
A Dictionary of Literary Symbols
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Explains and illustrates the literary symbols that we all frequently encounter (such as swan, rose, moon, gold), and gives hundreds of cross-references and quotations.
The following featured books are included in the Kistler Library's collection. EBooks will link directly to their source (login may be required).
Follow these links to search additional eBooks online:
On Writing
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Storytelling in the Digital World
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Storytelling in the Digital World explores new, emerging narrative practices as they are enacted on digital platforms such as Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Contributors'online ethnographies investigate a wide range of themes including the nature of processes of transformation and recontextualization of offline events into digital narratives; the effects of digital anonymity and pseudonymity on narrative practices; the strategies through which virtual communities discursively work together to solidify and negotiate their sociocultural identities; the tensions between the affordances that characterize different online media and the communicative needs of users; the structures and modes in which virtual users construct and enact participatory practices in these environments; and the significance of different spatiotemporal dimensions in the encoding, sharing and appreciation of stories. More generally, the volume engages with some of the theoretical and methodological challenges that the growing presence of digital technologies and media poses to narrative analysis.
Telling Stories: The Craft of Narrative and the Writing Life
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A prolific and award-winning writer, Lee Martin has put pen to paper to offer his wisdom, honed during thirty years of teaching the oh-so-elusive art of writing. Telling Stories is intended for anyone interested in thinking more about the elements of storytelling in short stories, novels, and memoirs. Martin clearly delineates helpful and practical techniques for demystifying the writing process and provides tools for perfecting the art of the scene, characterization, detail, point of view, language, and revision—in short, the art of writing. His discussion of the craft in his own life draws from experiences, memories, and stories to provide a more personal perspective on the elements of writing. Martin provides encouragement by sharing what he's learned from his journey through frustrations, challenges, and successes. Most important, Telling Stories emphasizes that you are not alone on this journey and that writers must remain focused on what they love: the process of moving words on the page. By focusing on that purpose, Martin contends, the journey will always take you where you're meant to go.
What It Means to Write: Creativity and Metaphor
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At a time when people must work harder than ever to stand out from the crowd, the word creativity can seem vague and overused. But what exactly is creativity? Adrian McKerracher travels from Vancouver to Havana to Buenos Aires, leading readers on a journey to discover poignant new insights into a life of letters. Through encounters with artists of all kinds, famous or obscure, McKerracher traces a socio-cultural history of the meaning of writing, each vignette a meditation on the way that metaphor limits and liberates understanding: creativity is a process, a possession, a relation, an algorithm, a game, and more. But What It Means to Write is far more than an archive of the figurative. Along the way, a labyrinth of chance reunites McKerracher with old friends, threatens him with violence, and invites him to remain forever in a place both real and imagined. His journey from cafés to libraries to late-night living rooms embodies the structure of a bold new methodology for interpreting creativity, demonstrating the tools for working productively with ambiguity and rebuilding meaning, one metaphor at a time. Told in character-driven narrative pulses that reflect on the nature of belonging, understanding, and loving, What It Means to Write is a celebration of the possibilities of both language and silence.
Freefall into Fiction: Finding Form
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Barbara Turner-Vesselago's first book, Writing Without a Parachute, showed writers how to fall in love with writing. This new book builds on this experience and encourages writers to pursue their work with intention and without inhibition.Freefall into Fiction: Finding Form is designed to help writers, step-by-step, to create publishable short stories, novels and memoirs by finding their own unique balance between the exploration offered by Freefall Writing and the requirements of each particular genre. This book penetrates deep inside the writing process where that balancing act takes place.
Possible Worlds Theory and Contemporary Narratology
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The notion of possible worlds has played a decisive role in postclassical narratology by awakening interest in the nature of fictionality and in emphasizing the notion of world as a source of aesthetic experience in narrative texts. As a theory concerned with the opposition between the actual world that we belong to and possible worlds created by the imagination, possible worlds theory has made significant contributions to narratology.Possible Worlds Theory and Contemporary Narratology updates the field of possible worlds theory and postclassical narratology by developing this theoretical framework further and applying it to a range of contemporary literary narratives. This volume systematically outlines the theoretical underpinnings of the possible worlds approach, provides updated methods for analyzing fictional narrative, and profiles those methods via the analysis of a range of different texts, including contemporary fiction, digital fiction, video games, graphic novels, historical narratives, and dramatic texts. Through the variety of its contributions, including those by three originators of the subject area—Lubomír Doležel, Thomas Pavel, and Marie-Laure Ryan—Possible Worlds Theory and Contemporary Narratology demonstrates the vitality and versatility of one of the most vibrant strands of contemporary narrative theory.
How Dare We! Write: A Multicultural Creative Writing Discourse
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How Dare We! Write: A Multicultural Creative Writing Discourse offers a much needed corrective to the usual dry and uninspired creative writing pedagogy. The collection asks us to consider questions, such as 'What does it mean to work through resistance from supposed mentors, to face rejection from publishers and classmates, and to stand against traditions that silence you?' and 'How can writers and teachers even begin to make diversity matter in meaningful ways on the page, in the classroom, and on our bookshelves?'
Writing Tools
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The Art of Description
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The Art of the Poetic Line
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Next Line, Please: Prompts to Inspire Poets and Writers
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In this book, David Lehman, the longtime series editor of the Best American Poetry, offers a masterclass in writing in form and collaborative composition. An inspired compilation of his weekly column on the American Scholar website, Next Line, Please makes the case for poetry open to all. Next Line, Please gathers in one place the popular column's plethora of exercises and prompts that Lehman designed to unlock the imaginations of poets and creative writers. He offers his generous and playful mentorship on forms such as the sonnet, haiku, tanka, sestina, limerick, and the cento and shares strategies for how to build one line from the last. This groundbreaking book shows how pop-up crowds of poets can inspire one another, making art, with what poet and guest editor Angela Ball refers to as 'spontaneous feats of language.' How can poetry thrive in the digital age? Next Line, Please shows the way. Lehman writes, 'There is something magical about poetry, and though we think of the poet as working alone, working in the dark, it is all the better when a community of like-minded individuals emerges, sharing their joy in the written word.'
I Would Lie to You If I Could: Interviews with Ten American Poets
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I Would Lie To You If I Could contains interviews with nine eminent contemporary American poets (Natasha Trethewey, Jane Hirshfield, Martín Espada, Stephen Kuusisto, Stephen Sandy, Ed Ochester, Carolyn Forche, Peter Everwine, and Galway Kinnell) and James Wright's widow Anne. It presents conversations with a vital cross section of poets representing a variety of ages, ethnicities, and social backgrounds. The poets testify to the demotic nature of poetry as a charged language that speaks uniquely in original voices, yet appeals universally. As individuals with their own transpersonal stories, the poets have emerged onto the national stage from very local places with news that witnesses memorably in social, personal, and political ways. They talk about their poems and development as poets self-effacingly, honestly, and insightfully, describing just how and when they were'hurt into poetry,'as well as why they have pursued writing poetry as a career in which, as Robert Frost noted in his poem'Two Tramps in Mud Time,'their object has become'to unite [their] avocation and [their] vocation / As [their] two eyes make one in sight.'
How to Be a Poet
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How to be a Poet combines advice, ideas and encouragement from experienced poets and editors in topical chapters to examine both the technical and creative dimensions of being a poet. It's a no-nonsense manual where we've replaced the spanners with lots of ink, elbow grease and edits. At each step, we ask plenty of questions – what makes a poem tick over perfectly, how do we get it started when it stalls, and which warning lights should you never ignore? Aimed at both new and more established poets, there is plenty for everyone here. How to be a Poet covers topics that range from redrafting poems and getting them published, to learning to pay attention and look and listen like a poet. There is practical advice on everything from getting over writer's block, getting it wrong and making peace with poetry, to performing live, experimenting with poetic form and using social media. This handbook aims to provoke, inspire and challenge poets of all forms – and encourage you to read widely, write fearlessly and actively participate in the life-changing, life-enhancing force for good that is poetry.
Sleuth: Gail Bowen on Writing Mysteries
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“Masterful.” Barbara Fradkin, two-time winner of the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel “Gail Bowen's Sleuth is a marvelous guide to the art of writing mysteries, told with verve, humour and elegance, and with a rare insight into the value of creating stories that explore the darkest parts of human nature.” Ausma Zehanat Khan, author of The Unquiet Dead “This is one of the best ‘how-to'books I've read. Utterly entertaining and personable, Gail Bowen also has some very solid tips for writers. I got re-inspired. New writers have a wonderful guide.” Maureen Jennings, author of the Murdoch Mystery series “In her primer Sleuth, Gail Bowen has taken the mystery out of writing mysteries, and in her insightful and humorous and compendious way (she cleverly cites Elmore Leonard, Richard Price and others) Gail actually describes the building blocks that form the basis of any novel, mystery or not.” Ian Hamilton, author of the Ava Lee novels “Intimate and informative, Bowen's Sleuth is destined to become a staple in every writer's tool box [….] an instant classic.” Robert Rotenberg, author of Heart of the City “Psst! Want to write a wildly successful mystery novel? Buy and read Gail Bowen's Sleuth.” Alan Bradley, New York Times bestselling author of the Flavia de Luce series
Off the Page: Screenwriting in the Era of Media Convergence
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Off the Page examines the business and craft of screenwriting in the era of media convergence. Daniel Bernardi and Julian Hoxter use the recent history of screenwriting labor coupled with close analysis of scripts in the context of the screenwriting paraindustry—from “how to write a winning script” books to screenwriting software—to explore the state of screenwriting today. They address the conglomerate studios making tentpole movies, expanded television, Indiewood, independent animation, microbudget scripting, the video games industry, and online content creation. Designed for students, producers, and writers who want to understand what studios want and why they want it, this book also examines how scripting is developing in the convergent media, beneath and beyond the Hollywood tentpole. By addressing specific genres across a wide range of media, this essential volume sets the standard for anyone in the expanded screenwriting industry and the scholars that study it.
Transcultural Screenwriting: Telling Stories for a Global World
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The world in which we live and work today has created new working conditions where storytellers, screenwriters and filmmakers collaborate with colleagues from other countries and cultures. This involves new challenges regarding the practice of transcultural screenwriting and the study of writing screenplays in a multi-cultural environment. Globalisation and its imperatives have seen the film co-production emerge as a means of sharing production costs and creating stories that reach transnational audiences. Transcultural Screenwriting: Telling Stories for a Global World provides an interdisciplinary approach to the study of screenwriting as a creative process by integrating the fields of film and TV production studies, screenwriting studies, narrative studies, rhetorics, transnational cinema studies, and intercultural communication studies. The book applies the emerging theoretical lens of ‘transcultural studies'to open new perspectives in the debate around notions of transnationalism, imperialism and globalisation, particularly in the screenwriting context, and to build stronger links across academic disciplines.This volume combines methods for studying, as well as methods for doing. It draws on case studies and testimonials from writers from all over the globe including South America, Europe and Asia.Transcultural Screenwriting: Telling Stories for a Global World is characterised by its scope, broad relevance, and emphasis on key aspects of screenwriting in an international environment.
Use the following multi-subject and subject-specific databases to search for detailed research articles on your topic. Login required for off-campus access. Click here for the full list of Rosemont's electronic databases.
Academic Search contains a wealth of essential material for learning and detailed research in a single, easily searched database, with the full text of articles from over 3,700 publications, and indexing and abstracts from nearly 5,300 publications.
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Kanopy is a streaming video platform providing students and faculty with both remote and on-campus access to select films. Faculty & staff may request the purchase of individual licenses for films to be used in class, assignments, or events. Students may not make title requests at this time.
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The links below will direct you to additional resources on the open web. Depending on the nature of your research, it may or may not be appropriate to utilize these sources, so it is always best to check first with your professor or a librarian. Consult this page for more guidance on evaluating websites.
The websites of professional organizations are great places to find the latest news in the field and professional networking opportunities.