“An absolutely necessary addition to the personal library of anyone who is a writer or dreams of writing.” - National Public Radio “Celebrates the pleasures of close reading and explores the power of well-wrought language…refreshing” - Time Out New York “Sensible, valuable and highly readable, Reading Like a Writer deserves perusal - both in and out of the classroom.” - Kansas City Star “Reading Like A Writer is different from the rest of the pack… wise book serves as an ispirational reminder.” - Washington Times “The passages are…subtle and brilliant in their capture of human complexity…Prose is…a skilled…analyst of what makes them so.” - San Francisco Chronicle “a jewel of a companion… insightful.” - Los Angeles Times “Witty.Insightful.” - Washington Post Book World “Prose’s little guide will motivate ‘people who love books’…Like the great works of fiction, it’s a wise and voluble companion.” - New York Times Book Review

contains an author biography and READING AND WRITING: A CONVERSATION WITH FRANCINE PROSE-an extensive interview by Jessica Murphy-that first appeared in THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY online. Throughout READING LIKE A WRITER, she cautions students to slow down and pay attention to words, the raw material out of which literature is crafted. Francine Prose takes your students on a guided tour of the tools and the tricks of the masters-Dostoevsky, Flaubert, Kafka, Austen, Joyce, Woolf, Chekhov-and discovers why these writers endure.

Prose reading like a writer