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Letters to a Young Writer

From the New York Times-bestselling, National Book Award-winning, Booker Prize-longlisted author of Apeirogon and Let the Great World Spin

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Letters to a Young Writer

By: Colum McCann
Narrated by: Colum McCann
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Bloomsbury presents Letters to a Young Writer written and read by Colum McCann.

From the National Book Award-winning, Booker Prize-longlisted author of Let the Great World Spin and Transatlantic comes a passionate and practical book of advice, as essential for budding writers as Stephen King’s On Writing

'A warm, open-hearted paean to the joys of writing' Sunday Times
'Excellent ... cannot fail as a pick-me-up' Observer

I hope there is something here for any young writer – or any older writer, for that matter – who happens to be looking for a teacher to come along, a teacher who, in the end, can really teach nothing at all but fire.

From the critically acclaimed Colum McCann, author of the National Book Award winner Let the Great World Spin, comes a paean to the power of language, and a direct address to the artistic, professional and philosophical concerns that challenge and sometimes torment an author.

Comprising fifty-two short prose pieces, Letters to a Young Writer ranges from practical matters of authorship, such as finding an agent, the pros and cons of creative writing degrees and handling bad reviews, through to the more joyous and celebratory, as McCann elucidates the pleasures to be found in truthful writing, for: ‘the best writing makes us glad that we are – however briefly – alive.’

Emphatic and empathetic, pragmatic and profound, this is an essential companion to any author’s journey – and a deeply personal work from one of our greatest literary voices.©2017 Colum McCann (P)2017 Penguin Random House LLC Letters & Correspondence Memoirs, Diaries & Correspondence Personal Development Personal Success Words, Language & Grammar Writing & Publishing
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Critic reviews

A warm, open-hearted paean to the joys of writing
Excellent ... This slim volume cannot fail as a pick-me-up
Practical writing advice meets a heartfelt love song to creativity
An intensely literary writer ... His prose thrums with echoes of Beckett, Yeats and Joyce
A writer of power and subtlety
A very gifted, charming writer
McCann’s writing is elegant and ironic
A supremely talented writer
Practical writing advice meets heartfelt love song to creativity
There is beauty to the language and precision, grace notes that return to mind time and again to transport you. McCann’s books feel universal. Now the 52-year-old Dublin-born New York-naturalised bestseller … is letting some of his secrets out … A guide to putting words on the page and a celebration of language, a call to look out, not in
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