Bibliograph

Voice lessons, on becoming a (woman) writer, Nancy Mairs

Type

Label

Voice lessons, on becoming a (woman) writer, Nancy Mairs

Language

eng

Bibliography note

Includes bibliographical references (p. 162-166)

resource.biographical

contains biographical information

Index

no index present

Literary Form

non fiction

Main title

Voice lessons

Nature of contents

bibliography

Responsibility statement

Nancy Mairs

Sub title

on becoming a (woman) writer

Summary

Voice Lessons is a book about writing from a woman with a remarkable story to tell and an utterly distinctive voice in which to tell it. Nancy Mairs's essays have been called "triumphs ... of will, style, candor, thought and even form" (Los Angeles Times). She has won acclaim for her autobiographical writing on themes from living with depression to renewing a marriage, from sex to religion. In Voice Lessons, Mairs's subjects are literary, but as always her approach is personal, revealing, and inspiring. Mairs first shares her sharply drawn story on how "finding a voice" as an essayist transformed her life when she was a graduate student, wife, and mother in her late thirties. In a tribute to the liberating power of literature and feminist ideas, she shows how the words of other writers made possible a new career, a new life in difficult times. Voice Lessons goes on to explore other women's writing and to outline a singular kind of literary life. Always grounding her writing in personal experience, always making ideas concrete, Mairs gives us essays on writing and the body, the challenges of autobiography, the revelatory power of Virginia Woolf and Alice Walker, the literature of personal disaster, and the art of dealing with rejection. Articulate, witty, incisive, and inspirational, Voice Lessons is a book for writers and aspiring writers, and for everyone who loves women's writing

Table Of Contents

Prelude: Loving the Other -- Voice Lessons -- Body at Work -- Writing (Into) Life: Virginia Woolf and Doris Lessing -- Essaying the Feminine: From Montaigne to Kristeva -- In Search of "In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens": Alice Walker -- Reading Houses, Writing Lives: The French Connection -- The Literature of Personal Disaster -- The Writer's Thin Skin and Faint Heart

Classification