High School Writing

A creative writer's shelf should hold at least three essential books: a dictionary, a style guide, and Writing Fiction. Janet Burroway's best-selling classic is the most widely used creative writing text in America, and for more than three decades, it has helped hundreds of thousands of students learn the craft.

Many of us would love to jot down our fondest stories and our tallest tales to preserve forever in written form. But wanting to do something and knowing how to do it are two different things. This is not a book about sentence structure and grammar, but a book on helping you keep your head in the game once you’ve decided that writing a book is something you might like to do.

Author and former literary agent Nathan Bransford shares his secrets for creating killer plots, fleshing out your first ideas, crafting compelling characters, and staying sane in the process. Hear the guide that New York Times best-selling author Ransom Riggs called "the best how-to-write-a-novel book I've read."

Although it may seem difficult, writing a book certainly isn't rocket science. It may be intimidating at first, but this comprehensive blueprint will guide you through the process from start to finish, in a way that will make it easy and achievable. You will be given actionable steps to help you clearly understand what you need to do in order to write your book, leaving you with a high quality finished product at the end.

Nic Chen refuses to spend her senior year branded as the girl who cheated on her charismatic and lovable boyfriend. To redefine her reputation among her Ivy League-obsessed classmates, Nic begins writing their college-admissions essays. But the more essays Nic writes for other people, the less sure she becomes of herself, the kind of person she is, and whether her moral compass even points north anymore.

For Chicago's Oak Park and River Forest High School's Spoken Word Club, there is one phrase that reigns supreme: Respect the Mic. It's been the club's call to arms since its inception in 1999. As its founder Peter Kahn says, "It's a call of pride and history and tradition and hope." This vivid new collection of poetry and prose - curated by award-winning and bestselling poets Hanif Abdurraqib, Franny Choi, Peter Kahn, and Dan "Sully" Sullivan - illuminates just that, uplifting the incredible legacy this community has cultivated.