The Reading List After a Writers Conference

I recently had the good fortune to attend Calvin College’s Festival of Faith & Writing, a three-day conference that draws thousands of writers from all over the world. They always have a great line-up of speakers and I am super glad that I was able to go (Thank you Baker Publishing Group!).

One of the things that I have learned by attending writers conferences is that writers tend to talk about specific books and authors as though every good writer has read them. If reading these books is a prerequisite to being a good writer, I’ve got some reading to do.

Here’s that list:

• Bird by Bird – Anne Lamott
• Anything by Flannery O’Connor
• Anything by Emily Dickinson
• The Giver – Lois Lowry
• Stein On Writing – Sol Stein
• Writing Fiction – Janet Burroway
• Anything by Art Spiegelman

And then there are the books that are either written by the speakers or recommended by the speakers. I have a feeling that writers would do well to read these too:

• American Born Chinese – Gene Luen Yang
• Boxers & Saints – Gene Luen Yang
• Same Difference – Derek Kirk Kim
• Idiot Psalms – Scott Cairns
• Charles and Emma – Deborah Heiligman
• Intentions – Deborah Heiligman
• The Way of Man – Martin Buber
• Esperanza Rising – Pam Munoz Ryan
• The Dreamer – Pam Munoz Ryan
• Not That Kind of Girl – Carlene Bauer
• Frances and Bernard – Carlene Bauer
• The American Way of Death Revisited – Jessica Mitford
• Let Us Now Praise Famous Men – James Agee & Walker Evans
• The Powers – Valerie Sayers
• Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street – Herman Melville
• The Gift of Being Yourself – David Benner
• Finder – Carla Speed McNeil
• Throne of the Crescent Moon – Saladin Ahmed
• The Girl with All the Gifts – M. R. Carey
• Alif the Unseen – G. Willow Wilson
• True Grit – Charles Portis

As you can see, it is quite a reading list. At the very least, I should probably read Bird by Bird and something by Flannery O’Connor lest they kick me out of the next writers conference I attend. We’ll see about the rest.

Have you read anything on this list that you’d put at the top of my stack?

Do you think I’m missing a book?

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