Literature and Its Writers: A Compact Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama

Literature is a conversation -- between writers and other writers, and writers and readers. In their introduction to literature anthology, Ann Charters, editor of the bestsellingThe Story and Its Writer, and Samuel Charters, a much-published poet and novelist, bring students into this conversation through a distinctive set of features, including an abundance of writer commentaries that model how to read and write about literature (and a minimum of intrusive editorial apparatus that may constrain how to think about it). In the fourth edition ofLiterature and Its Writers, Ann and Samuel Charters open the conversation even further, by expanding the range of writers they include and presenting innovative new kinds of conversations about literature for students to enter.

Ann Charters (Ph.D., Columbia University) is a professor of English at the University of Connecticut and has taught courses in the short story for over 30 years. A preeminent authority on the Beat writers, Charters has written a critically acclaimed biography of Jack Kerouac; compiled Beats & Company, a collection of her own photographs of Beat writers; and edited the best-selling Portable Beat Reader. Her most recent books are The Kerouac Reader; Selected Letters of Jack Kerouac, 1957-1969; Beat Down to Your Soul; and The Story and Its Writer, Seventh Edition, available in full and compact versions.

Samuel Charters has taught creative writing and published widely in a variety of genres, including 11 books of poetry, 4 novels, a book of criticism on contemporary American poetry, a biography (coauthored with Ann Charters) of the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, and translations of the poetry of Tomas Transtromer and Edith Sodergran. An ethnomusicologist, he produces blues and jazz recordings and has published many books about music, among them a history of New Orleans jazz and a study of bluesman Robert Johnson.