"The Emmy-winning CBS Sunday Morning correspondent chronicles his year traveling to every one of our National Parks, discovering the most beautiful places and most interesting people that America has to offer. When Conor Knighton decided to spend a year wandering through America's "best idea," he was worried the whole thing might end up being his worst idea. But after a broken engagement and a broken heart, Conor desperately needed a change of scenery....

The protagonist of Tobias Wolff’s shrewdly—and at times devastatingly—observed first novel is a boy at an elite prep school in 1960. He is an outsider who has learned to mimic the negligent manner of his more privileged classmates. Like many of them, he wants more than anything on earth to become a writer. But to do that he must first learn to tell the truth about himself.
The agency of revelation is the school literary contest,...

"During a creative writing unit at Longfellow School, the students in Mrs. Brisbane's class practice using their imagination with their very own writing journals--and Humphrey finds out that writing from his imagination is harder than it looks"--

Abdul loves telling stories but thinks his messy handwriting and spelling mistakes will keep him from becoming an author, until Mr. Muhammad visits and encourages him to persist.

"For students and writers alike, a brilliant guide to the craft of writing by the National Book Award-winning author of Spartina. National Book Award winner John Casey is a masterful novelist who is also an inspiring and beloved teacher. In Beyond the First Draft he offers essential and original insights into the art of writing-and rewriting-fiction. Through anecdotes about other writers' methods and habits (as well as his own) and close readings...

Lizzie, who loves to tell and write stories, is surprised to discover that much of her storytelling inspiration comes from her messy baby brother.

Swallowtail Island is hosting the Swallowtales Writer's Conference. Lark's ecstatic to be chosen as a "page" for her favorite author, Ann E. Keyhart. But they say you should never meet your idols. When Keyhart arrives with her personal assistant in tow, she is nothing but a terror. And within a few hours, the assistant is dead! But the explanation isn't sitting well. Not when lots of people had reasons to want to be rid of Keyhart, and especially...

"As a creative writing professor in a bucolic Vermont town, Gil's quiet life is indelibly changed when he receives shocking news: His sister, Sharon, and her husband have been killed in a car accident, and their only son, seventeen-year-old Matthew, is coming to live with Gil and his family. It's with apprehension that Gil and his wife, Molly, greet Matthew. Yes, he has just lost both his parents. But they haven't seen him in seven years, and the...