Brenda Miller – författare

A Braided Heart provides a friendly, personal, and smart guide to the writing life. It also offers clear and original instruction on craft elements at the forefront of today’s emerging forms in creative nonfiction: from the short-short, to the braided form, to the hermit crab essay. An acknowledged expert in these forms, Brenda Miller gives writers practical advice on how to sustain and invigorate their writing practice, while also encouraging readers to explore their own writing lives.“Brenda Miller writes so beautifully in these lyrical and ‘braided’ essays—personal meditations that take us deep into the miracle of writing itself. Her eye is always alert, her ear wonderfully tuned to the nuances of perception. The art of the essay is alive and well in her hands.”—Jay Parini, author of Borges and Me

The Next Draft: Inspiring Craft Talks from the Rainier Writing Workshop brings together a selection of the “morning talks” delivered by the renowned authors who teach at the prestigious Rainier Writing Workshop MFA program. These morning talks are a highlight of the residencies at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington, featuring inspiring, innovative approaches to writing and literature across genres. For this collection, Brenda Miller has selected essays that feature diverse and illustrious writers such as Geffrey Davis, Marjorie Sandor, Barrie Jean Borich, Jenny Johnson, Oliver de la Paz, Lia Purpura, Kent Myers, Rebecca McClanahan, and others. Ranging from reading and writing in the Jewish tradition of midrash to the role of the writer as cultural critic in the 21st century, The Next Draft brings to life the kind of intellectual and creative excitement that underlies the intensive MFA experience at Pacific Lutheran University. Not only do these talks show innovative approaches to writing and literature across genres, they inspire the reader to think about how to read differently and thus bring their own work to a new level.

A Braided Heart provides a friendly, personal, and smart guide to the writing life. It also offers clear and original instruction on craft elements at the forefront of today’s emerging forms in creative nonfiction: from the short-short, to the braided form, to the hermit crab essay. An acknowledged expert in these forms, Brenda Miller gives writers practical advice on how to sustain and invigorate their writing practice, while also encouraging readers to explore their own writing lives.“Brenda Miller writes so beautifully in these lyrical and ‘braided’ essays—personal meditations that take us deep into the miracle of writing itself. Her eye is always alert, her ear wonderfully tuned to the nuances of perception. The art of the essay is alive and well in her hands.”—Jay Parini, author of Borges and Me

The Next Draft: Inspiring Craft Talks from the Rainier Writing Workshop brings together a selection of the “morning talks” delivered by the renowned authors who teach at the prestigious Rainier Writing Workshop MFA program. These morning talks are a highlight of the residencies at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington, featuring inspiring, innovative approaches to writing and literature across genres. For this collection, Brenda Miller has selected essays that feature diverse and illustrious writers such as Geffrey Davis, Marjorie Sandor, Barrie Jean Borich, Jenny Johnson, Oliver de la Paz, Lia Purpura, Kent Myers, Rebecca McClanahan, and others. Ranging from reading and writing in the Jewish tradition of midrash to the role of the writer as cultural critic in the 21st century, The Next Draft brings to life the kind of intellectual and creative excitement that underlies the intensive MFA experience at Pacific Lutheran University. Not only do these talks show innovative approaches to writing and literature across genres, they inspire the reader to think about how to read differently and thus bring their own work to a new level.

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Two award-winning authors reveal everything you need to know to develop your own distinctive voice and craft compelling, creative nonfiction 

“Tell all the Truth but tell it Slant.”—Emily Dickinson

With these words, Dickinson offers sound advice for nonfiction writers: Tell the truth but become more than mere transcribers of daily life. Since 2003, Tell It Slant has set the standard for creative nonfiction instruction, showing writers how to move beyond mere facts and, instead, make the most of their own “slant” on the world. This revised and updated third edition offers:

• New and expanded chapters on writing about identity, maintaining a productive work/life balance, and navigating the publishing industry• An anthology with diverse pieces that range from traditional essay to the graphic memoir• Expanded discussion of contemporary and emerging literary forms• New “Try It” writing exercises throughout the book

Whether planning a course or learning on your own, Tell It Slant provides everything you need to know to develop a distinctive voice and to craft compelling creative nonfiction. This book provides the basis for a complete education in nonfiction writing, wherever your classroom might be.

“Tell It Slant is a valuable and comprehensive resource for nonfiction writers, filled with exhilarating examples, powerful exercises, and pure inspiration. Miller and Paola are gifted teachers and writers with endless wisdom to share and a lovely way of sharing it with struggling writers at every level.”—Dinty W. Moore, author of The Mindful Writer: Noble Truths of the Writing Life

It can be difficult to create space for our spiritual lives in a world crowded with distractions. THE PEN AND THE BELL is about how to achieve mindfulness and creative fulfillment in spite of long to-do lists. It's about gaining access to our deeper selves in the workaday world and bringing forth this authentic self in our writing. With both meditative and writing exercises in each chapter, it will help you awaken your creative soul and find a more rewarding life."This isn't a book - it's a beautiful, quiet path into the deep woods of contemplative practice through the medium of the written word. Yes, reading its chapters will delight you. Yes, listening to these two wise women talk quietly about their lives and their writing process is a sweet and effortless reading experience that will make you feel as if you are sitting across from them, a cu of tea in front of you, hearing the measure and lilt of their kindly, honest, voices. But the real crux of this book/path isn't their words - it's yours."-- Norman Fischer author Taking Our Places

A luminous collection of essays and poems about family, faith, and the art of saying goodbye from award-winning essayist, poet, and teacher Brenda Miller.In Love You, Bye, award-winning author Brenda Miller maps the territory of caregiving, loss, and unexpected grace. The title—drawn from the simple phrase she and her mother said to each other for years—captures the bittersweet essence of a book that finds profound meaning in the most ordinary expressions of love. At the center of this collection lies the story of Miller's journey as the "wayward daughter" who becomes the devoted caregiver to her aging parents, chronicling her father's gradual decline and her mother's final months with remarkable vulnerability. From the rituals of Passover to the silence of hospice rooms, from the mysterious appearances of tree frogs to the sacred work of singing at deathbeds, Miller weaves together the ordinary and the transcendent, often finding that the sacred is embedded in the mundane.Miller's voice moves seamlessly between prose and poetry, between humor and heartbreak, between the personal and the universal. She transforms the simple act of saying goodbye into an art form and the everyday language of love into something approaching prayer. Love You, Bye is essential reading for anyone navigating the complexities of aging parents, the mysteries of faith, or the simple courage required to keep loving in a world that can break our hearts.

"The body knows a language the mind never wholly masters." In this remarkable debut collection—essentially a memoir in essay form—Brenda Miller creates an autobiography that locates her body as its central reference point. Single and unable to bear children of her own, Miller details a life in relationship to the extended human family, a journey that traverses realms physical, emotional, and spiritual."Miller shows us that a love of language is not merely the province of the poet, but that in the hands of a skillful and original prose writer, the essay becomes, in its own fashion, an ode, an elegy, a sonnet, a sestina."—Robin Hemley"These sensuous, memorable essays are an inquiry into what it is to be a body in a world of bodies, an alert, receptive, physical woman moving through interlocking realms of culture, geography, and spirit."—Mark DotyMarketing Plans:Author tour in the areas in and around Seattle, Portland, Denver, San Francisco, Missoula, and Salt Lake CityNewsletter, brochure, catalog, and postcard mailingsAdvertisements in key literary and trade magazinesReader copies available to booksellers through participation in Book Sense Advance Access ProgramBrenda Miller has received two Pushcart Prizes for her work in creative nonfiction, and her essays have been published in periodicals such as The Sun, Utne Reader, Prairie Schooner, The Georgia Review, and Seneca Review. Her work has been anthologized in The Beacon Best of 1999: Creative Writing by Women and Men of All Colors; Storming Heaven’s Gate: An Anthology of Spiritual Writings by Women; and In Brief: Short Takes on the Personal. She is Editor-in-Chief of The Bellingham Review and an Assistant Professor of English at Western Washington University. She lives in Bellingham, WA.

A memoir in essay form, with the body as its central reference point.