Reading, Writing, and Leaving Home Life on the Page [Paperback]

At once a memoir of an exotic life, a meditation on the art and craft of writing, and a brilliant examination of the always complex relationship between fiction and life, Lynn Freed’s critically acclaimedReading, Writing, and Leaving Homesurprises, instructs, and delights. With “dark and comforting wisdom” (Anne Lamott) and “great intellectual and emotional range” (Diane Johnson), Freed tears off all fictional disguises and exposes the human being behind the artist. A must-read for writers, readers, and anyone engaged in literature,Reading, Writing, and Leaving Homeis destined to be a classic in the field of writing about writing.

PRAISE FORREADING, WRITING, AND LEAVING HOME

To the tiny list of necessary books for people who aspire to the writing life--Mystery and Manners, by Flannery O'Connor, and One Writer's Beginnings, by Eudora Welty--must now be addedReading, Writing, and Leaving Home. --The Washington Post Book World

Something for every writer, published or aspiring, to befriend over a period of years, a generous source of heat, heart, energy and consolation . . . What becomes clear from this powerful little book is that Lynn Freed truly does inspire. --San Francisco Chronicle

Lynn Freed is the recipient of the inaugural Katherine Anne Porter Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She is the author of five highly praised novels and a short-story collection,The Curse of the Appropriate Man, which was named aNew York TimesNotable Book. She lives in Sonoma, California.

A Child's Reading

ONLY LONG AFTER I WAS OLD ENOUGH to read for myself, did I really make the connection between literature and the printed word. My mother, whose first and abiding love was for the theatre, preferred to tell her own versions of the stories other parents read to their children from bool£0