Drawing on her own experiences, the author of the critically acclaimed memoir "Whip Smart" discusses how to confront the emotional, psychological, and physical work of writing about our most intimate lives.

In the wake of her mother's death, Cheryl Strayed's family scattered and her marriage was destroyed. Four years later, twenty-six years old with nothing to lose, Cheryl made the decision to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert to Washington State - alone. She had no experience as a long-distance hiker and the trail was little more than an idea. But it was a promise of piecing back together a life that had come undone.

"John Hodgman--New York Times bestselling author, semi-famous personality, deranged millionaire, increasingly elderly husband, father, and human of earth--has written a memoir about his cursed travels through two wildernesses: from the woods of his home of Massachusetts, birthplace of rage, to his exile on the coast of Maine, so-called 'Vacationland,' home to the most painful beaches on earth. Vacationland is also about John's wandering in the metaphoric...

Builds on the author's popular food-centric blog to recount her unconventional upbringing and her unusually happy and occasionally sorrowful life of literary and culinary sensuality.

A NOTE FROM JEN LANCASTER:
"To whom the fat rolls…I'm tired of books where a self-loathing heroine is teased to the point where she starves herself skinny in hopes of a fabulous new life. And I hate the message that women can't possibly be happy until we all fit into our skinny jeans. I don't find these stories uplifting; they make me want to hug these women and take them out for fizzy champagne drinks and cheesecake and explain...

An acclaimed journalist and human rights activist shares the harrowing yet deeply hopeful story of her troubled childhood in East St. Louis--a memoir of family, faith and the power of books.

"From the number one New York Times bestselling author comes another stunning memoir that is tender, touching...and just a little spooky. 'Here's a partial list of things I don't believe in: God. The Devil. Heaven. Hell. Bigfoot. Ancient Aliens. Past lives. Vampires. Zombies. Homeopathy. Bigfoot. Canola oil, because there's no such thing as a canola. Note that 'witches' and 'witchcraft' are absent from this list. When really they should be right there...

"I've written a lot about destiny in my fiction," admits Richard Russo, "not because I understand it, but because I'd like to." In the first of these eleven remarkable essays, Russo shares the story of his onetime fiction workshop classmate who, of the two of them, was considered the class star, bound for literary glory. Yet it was Russo who emerged as a major writer. How, he wonders, did he manage to steal his classmate's destiny? What twists of...

"Meredith Hall's moving but unsentimental memoir begins in 1965, when she becomes pregnant at 16. Shunned by her insular New Hampshire community, she is then kicked out of the house by her mother. Her father and stepmother reluctantly take her in, hiding her before they finally banish her altogether. After giving her baby up for adoption, Hall wanders recklessly through the Middle East, where she survives by selling her possessions and finally her...

The story of a street-smart city girl who must adapt to a new life on an apple farm after she falls in love with Adrian Curtis, the pride of a prominent local family whose lives and orchards are said to be cursed. Married after only three months, young Theresa finds life with Adrian on the farm far more difficult and dangerous than she expected. Rejected by her husband's family as an outsider, she slowly learns about the isolated world of farming...