Writers on Writing: Conversations with Allen Mendenhall

As a lawyer, Allen Mendenhall asks questions. As a writer, he's interested in the craft. Combine these two and you get this, a collection of writers discussing writing. Writers on Writing: Conversations with Allen Mendenhall is an anthology of penetrating interviews with prominent and diverse authors who discuss arts, literature, books, culture, life, and the writing process with Allen Mendenhall, editor of Southern Literary Review and associate dean at Faulkner University Thomas Goode Jones School of Law. Featuring the telling insights and sage advice of novelists, historians, poets, professors, philosophers, and more, Writers on Writing is not just an informative guide or a useful resource but a fount of inspiration. Readers will find in these pages authentic voices, frank exchanges, and unique perspectives on a wide variety of matters. Aspiring and established writers alike will learn from this book.

Writers on Writing: Conversations with Allen Mendenhall is an anthology of penetrating interviews with prominent and diverse authors who discuss arts, literature, books, culture, life, and the writing process with Allen Mendenhall, editor of Southern Literary Review and associate dean at Thomas Goode Jones School of Law.  Featuring the telling insights and sage advice of novelists, historians, poets, professors, philosophers, and more,Writers on Writing is not just an informative guide or useful resource but a fount of inspiration. Preceding each interview are brief introductions to the authors and their works. Readers will find in these pages authentic voices, frank exchanges, and unique perspectives on a wide variety of matters. Aspiring and established writers alike will learn from this book.

"Mendenhall … the editor of the Southern Literary Review, has long been drawn to interviews with creatives and artists—an interest that he’s fueled over the years by perusing the hallowed archives of the Paris Review. As an associate dean at the Jones School of Law at Faulkner University, it’s perhaps unsurprising that he’s also highly aware of the various ways in which “people respond differently to probing inquiry.” However, one never gets the sense that the 46 writers he interviews in this book are being put on the stand; on the contrary, Mendenhall’s lines of questioning are subtle, and he successfully fulfills his stated intention of letting “the writers do the talking.” This collection will familiarize readers with the approaches, techniques, and concerns of a diverse set of authors in a broad range of genres."

—Kirkus Reviews

“Anyone interested in the lives of present-day American writers, and particularly of writers who come from the South or take the South as their subject, will find the interviews compiled in Allen Mendenhall’s Writers on Writing an unalloyed pleasure. Mendenhall is the most gentle and conversational of interviewers, and his book consists of interview after interview with writers, famous and obscure alike, who are pleased to talk freely about their writing habits, their careers, and their ambitions. The result is a book that manages to be a serious romp, full of insight and full of fun.”

—Wilfred M. McClay,
G.T. and Libby Blankenship Chair in the History of Liberty, University of Oklahoma

“The interviews in Writers on Writing are not formulaic Q&As, but organic conversations with a diverse group of writers, including numerous award-winning and ;New York Times best-selling authors. Mendenhall shows us more than the art and craft of these writers—a group that includes novelists, historians, memoirists, social commentators, essayists, poets, and writers of mystery, legal and crime thrillers, and literary criticism. He reveals their hearts.”

—Susan Cushman,
editor of Southern Writers on Writing and A Second Blooming: Becoming the Women We Are Meant to Be, author of the novel Cherry Bomb ;and the memoir Tangles and Plaques: A Mother and Daughter Face Alzheimer’s