Lit from Within: Contemporary Masters on the Art and Craft of Writing

Ever year the Ohio University Spring Literary Festival (AKA Lit Fest), invites writers to talk about writing: forty-five minutes on any topic, no stipulations, no themes. It's nice that the organizers assume that all readers, whether writers or not, are interested in issues of craft, and that divisions of genre are less important than a shared love of words. Alas, the resulting anthology, edited by Moore and Haworth, both of whom teach at the University, also suggests the potential pitfalls: the 15 talks (by Billy Collins, Francine Prose, Charles Baxter, and Peter Ho Davies, among others) are not all equally interesting. Some, though effective, will makes readers feel like they've returned to school. Others, like memoirist Robin Hemley's pique as to the low regard for the memoir or poet David Kirby's ire about being asked stupid questions about poetry, seem like vanity projects. However, when authors genuinely explore something—questions, in Claire Bateman's case and facts in Maggie Nelson's—we get what we hope for when we let writers loose: essays we couldn't have imagined or predicted and for which we will always be grateful. (Mar.)