Anton Chekhov is revered as a boldly innovative playwright and short story writer - but he wrote more than just plays and stories. In this book, the author introduces readers to some other sides of Chekhov.

“A gem of a book . . . of use to both beginning and seasoned ethnographers, as well as to anyone who wants to improve his or her writing about social life.” —Elizabeth Fine, Journal of Folklore Research Anton Chekhov is revered as a boldly innovative playwright and short story writer—but he wrote more than just plays and stories. In Alive in the Writing—an intriguing hybrid of writing guide, biography, and literary analysis—anthropologist and novelist Kirin Narayan introduces readers to some other sides of Chekhov: his pithy, witty observations on the writing process, his life as a writer through accounts by his friends, family, and lovers, and his venture into nonfiction through his book Sakhalin Island. By closely attending to the people who lived under the appalling conditions of the Russian penal colony on Sakhalin, Chekhov showed how empirical details combined with a literary flair can bring readers face to face with distant, different lives, enlarging a sense of human responsibility. Highlighting this balance of the empirical and the literary, Narayan calls on Chekhov to bring new energy to the writing of ethnography and creative nonfiction alike. Weaving together selections from writing by and about him with examples from other talented ethnographers and memoirists, she offers practical exercises and advice on topics such as story, theory, place, person, voice, and self. A new and lively exploration of ethnography, Alive in the Writing shows how the genre’s attentive, sustained connection with the lives of others can become a powerful tool for any writer. “A brief and brilliant book about what it means to be an ethnographer, and how to do it responsibly, and better.” —James Wood, The New Yorker

Discover the revolutionary writing practice that can transform your life! In 1976, Linda Trichter Metcalf, then a university English professor, sat down with pen and paper and intuitively started a self-guided writing practice that helped to bring herself into focus and clarify her life as never before. She and a colleague, Tobin Simon, introduced this original method into their classrooms. They experienced such solid response from their students that, for the last twenty-five years, they have devoted themselves to teaching what has now become the respected practice of Proprioceptive Writing®–in workshops, secondary and elementary schools, and college psychology and writing classes around the country, among them the New School University. “Proprioception” comes from the Latin proprius, meaning “one’s own,” and this writing method helps synthesize emotion and imagination, generating authentic insight and catharsis. Proprioceptive Writing® is not formal writing, nor is it automatic or stream-of-consciousness writing. Requiring a regular, disciplined practice in a quiet environment, the method uses several aids to deepen attention and free the writer within: Baroque music, a candle, a pad, and a pen. Presenting Proprioceptive Writing® in book form for the first time, Writing the Mind Alive shows how you, too, can use it to • Focus awareness, dissolve inhibitions, and build self-trust • Unburden your mind and resolve emotional conflicts • Connect more deeply with your spiritual self • Write and speak with strength and clarity • Enhance the benefits of psychotherapy • Awaken your senses and emotions • Liberate your creative energies Featuring actual “writes” by students of all ages, Writing the Mind Alive is a catalyst for mental and emotional aliveness that can truly enrich the rest of your life.

GOOD MORNING AMERICA BUZZ PICK • A young, ambitious female astronaut’s life is upended by a love affair that threatens the rescue of a lost crew in this brilliantly imagined novel “with echoes of Station Eleven, The Martian, and, yes, Jane Eyre” (Observer). NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY VULTURE AND SHE READS • “The female astronaut novel we never knew we needed.”—Entertainment Weekly June is a brilliant but difficult girl with a gift for mechanical invention who leaves home to begin grueling astronaut training at the National Space Program. Younger by two years than her classmates at Peter Reed, the school on campus named for her uncle, she flourishes in her classes but struggles to make friends and find true intellectual peers. Six years later, she has gained a coveted post as an engineer on a space station—and a hard-won sense of belonging—but is haunted by the mystery of Inquiry, a revolutionary spacecraft powered by her beloved late uncle’s fuel cells. The spacecraft went missing when June was twelve years old, and while the rest of the world seems to have forgotten the crew, June alone has evidence that makes her believe they are still alive. She seeks out James, her uncle’s former protégé, also brilliant, also difficult, who has been trying to discover why Inquiry’s fuel cells failed. James and June forge an intense intellectual bond that becomes an electric attraction. But the relationship that develops between them as they work to solve the fuel cell’s fatal flaw threatens to destroy everything they’ve worked so hard to create—and any chance of bringing the Inquiry crew home alive. A propulsive narrative of one woman’s persistence and journey to self-discovery, In the Quick is an exploration of the strengths and limits of human ability in the face of hardship, and the costs of human ingenuity. This edition includes a bonus chapter.

Dark, cutting, and coursed through with bright flashes of humour, crystalline imagery, and razor-sharp detail, I Become a Delight to My Enemies is a gut-wrenchingly powerful, breathtakingly beautiful meditation on the violence and shame inflicted on the female body and psyche. An experimental fiction, I Become a Delight to My Enemies uses many different voices and forms to tell the stories of the women who live in an uncanny Town, uncovering their experiences of shame, fear, cruelty, and transcendence. Sara Peters combines poetry and short prose vignettes to create a singular, unflinching portrait of a Town in which the lives of girls and women are shaped by the brutality meted upon them and by their acts of defiance and yearning towards places of safety and belonging. Through lucid detail, sparkling imagery and illumination, Peters' individual characters and the collective of The Town leap vividly, fully formed off the page. A hybrid in form, I Become a Delight to My Enemies is an awe-inspiring example of the exquisite force of words to shock and to move, from a writer of exceptional talent and potential.

Shares the author's story of his return to physical, mental, and spiritual health, highlighting the action steps that will help readers live life to the fullest.

Writing is the vehicle for communication. In addition to promoting the need for good communication skills, the teaching of the writing process provides opportunities for students to develop clear thinking skills. Writing is also a developmental process that each student can successfully experience at different levels when approached systematically. Based upon this premise, this Action Tool presents the five stages of writing: prewrite, write, revise, edit, and publish in a manner that allows writing to be taught as a process. Strategies for Teaching Writing: An ASCD Action Tool makes writing in the classroom manageable. The tools provide a step-by-step approach to teaching the writing process. The tools include complete how-to-use instructions, suggestions, classroom examples and cross-curricular activities. Using the tools, teachers can grant students time to write, to process their thoughts and develop a way to analyze their thinking using cognitive reasoning instead of impromptu thought. The Action Tool also provide teachers with assessment strategies to assess students participation and progress at each stage of the writing process.

A selfless act of bravery had propelled Seattle schoolteacher Claire Grant into the center of a terrorist manhunt. Now, catching him depends on her—and her ability to play the deadly revenge game the terrorist is plotting. One wrong move, and she'll die. And so will an innocent. Her best chance for staying alive is charismatic FBI agent Luke Krueger—a man with his own agenda. Separate, Claire and Luke are pawns. But together, can they uncover the terrorist's weakness and stop the madman once and for all?