Books about Writers

Possession by AS Byatt kind of fits the bill? It’s about two academics who specialise respectively in two different romantic poets from the 1800s, one very obscure, one seminal, and discovering a previously unknown love story by retracing their steps and re-reading their work and letters. It feels beautifully scholarly in a way you might enjoy.

The Shipping News by Annie Proux is about a man who becomes a journalist sort of by accident, and after the death of his wife moves his small family up to his family home in a remote part of Newfoundland, where he becomes part of a small local paper writing features on the boats arriving in the harbour.

Heartburn by Nora Ephron is adjacently about her own writing, “everything is copy” – a semi autobiographical story about her divorce from the Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein.

The Rachel Papers by Martin Amis is a wickedly funny short novel about an *awful* teenage boy who is literature obsessed, prepping for his Oxford exams, and making an extensive set of writings about his plans to seduce a woman who he is increasingly falling in love with throughout the book.

And not non-fiction, but I also love Stephen King’s memoir On Writing – probably much more than I like any of his actual novels. It makes writing feel so near to my ability. You might get a kick out of Misery, too, if you haven’t read it – where an author is held captive and forced to write for a super fan.

Also non fiction, but I love it as a total love letter to literature, but Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi is just breathtakingly gorgeous – and read like a novel. A book about teaching writing.