Writing the Southwest - Tapa dura

"This highly entertaining and instructive potluck contains excerpts from the works of fourteen of the southwest's most important writers along with their biographies and their comments on the meaning and process of writing. . . . If you can read only one book about the southwest, it should be this one. If you have any inclination to be a writer, you must read this book and listen to the CD." "David Dunaway and Sara Spurgeon offer a hybrid of biography, interview, and excerpts about fourteen Southwestern poets, playwrights, essayists, and novelists in "Writing the Southwest," . . . A very worthwhile, attractive package. It is in some way a snapshot or voiceprint of the major Southwestern writers in the early 1990s, and we hear their own voices as they articulate their concerns and aspirations."

First published in 1995, this assemblage of interviews, bibliographies, excerpts, and criticism on fourteen of the Southwest's most important authors has been updated and expanded. The accompanying 74-minute CD provides excerpts from the authors. Tony Hillerman discusses how blindness in the army helped shape his writings; Terry McMillan explains her start as a writer and why she thought, when she was young, that African-Americans didn't write books. Each recorded interview ranges from 4 to 10 minutes. Book and CD.