How We Write. Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blank Page

September 21, 2015 by Communications

Congratulations to Suzanne Akbari for the new book she edited: How We Write. Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blank Page.

The book contains essays of three CMS people: beside Suzanne, Alexandra Gillespie and Alice Hutton Sharp contributed with an essay. Moreover, the book’s layout and design is by Chris Piuma, also from CMS.

Here’s the link for the book (free download) – anyone afraid of the blank page should find it really useful! 

Book cover

This collection is not about how TO write, but how WE write: unlike a prescriptive manual that promises to unlock the secret to efficient productivity, the contributors talk about their own writing processes, in all their messy, frustrated, exuberant, and awkward dis/order. The contributors range from graduate students and recent PhDs to senior scholars working in the fields of medieval studies, art history, English literature, poetics, early modern studies, musicology, and geography. All are engaged in academic writing, but some of the contributors also publish in other genres, includes poetry and fiction. Several contributors maintain a very active online presence, including blogs and websites; all are committed to strengthening the bonds of community, both in person and online, which helps to explain the effervescent sense of collegiality that pervades the volume, creating linkages across essays and extending outward into the wide world of writers and readers.