About the Author

William Zinsser is a writer, editor and teacher. He began his career on the New York Herald Tribune and has since written regularly for leading magazines. During the 1970s he was master of Branford College at Yale. His 17 books, ranging from baseball to music to American travel, include the influential Writing to Learn and Writing About Your Life. He teaches at the New School in New York.

Reviews

Russell Baker, Annie Dillard, Alfred Kazin, Toni Morrison, Lewis Thomas and Zinsser ``explore the craft of memoir, defined here as a portion of a life, narrower in scope than autobiography,'' said PW of the second volume in the Writer's Craft series. (September)

Five writers discuss the art of memoir in talks given at the New York Public Library. Each focuses on a corner of life, but one revealing both the person and the world that shaped him or her. Annie Dillard talks of her Pittsburgh childhood and her moment of waking to the world outside. Russell Baker explains why his first draft of Growing Up was so bad that he had to start over again. Alfred Kazin finds that writing about his Brooklyn childhood connected him with the great tradition of Emerson and Whitman. Toni Morrison tells why her fiction uses not only family history but the slave narratives of her people. Lewis Thomas traces the evolution of his singular self from primeval bacteria to contemporary scientist whose drive to be useful is the most fundamental of all biological necessities. A delightful and instructive book. Milton Meltzer, New York