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  • Published: 15 September 2015
  • ISBN: 9781607748090
  • Imprint: Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 208
  • RRP: $35.00

Dear Mister Essay Writer Guy

Advice and Confessions on Writing, Love, and Cannibals



This unique writing guide pairs questions sent in by famous contemporary essayists with advice-column-style responses and hilariously witty example essays from acclaimed author and professor Dinty W. Moore.

Dear Mister Essay Writer Guy,
I have a hot crush on the em dash. What does my need to stuff—while simultaneously fracturing—my sentences—with the meandering, the explanatory, the discursive, the perhaps not-entirely-necessary—say about me?  
—Cheryl Strayed

Have you ever wished there were an advice columnist for writers, but one who didn’t take things so damned seriously? This unique writing guide pairs questions sent in by top contemporary essayists with hilariously witty answers and essays from acclaimed author Dinty W. Moore. Phillip Lopate asks for advice on writing about your ex without sounding like an ass, Julianna Baggott worries that to be a great writer you must drink like a fish, and Roxane Gay asks whether it’s kosher to write about writing.

Taking advantage of all the tools available to today’s personal essayist—egregious puns, embarrassing anecdotes, and cocktail napkins—Professor Moore answers these questions, and more, demystifying the world of nonfiction once and for all. With a tip of the hat to history’s most infamous essay—Montaigne’s “Of Cannibals”—this book provides rollicking relief for writers in distress.

  • Published: 15 September 2015
  • ISBN: 9781607748090
  • Imprint: Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 208
  • RRP: $35.00

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