About this item
A vivid, intimate, and inspiring exploration of how to write through persona, from the Pulitzer Prize-winning founder of an influential writing school.Throughout his growth as a writer, acclaimed poet Philip Schultz has battled with the dark voice in his head -- the "shitbird," as his late friend the poet Ralph Dickey termed it -- that whispers his insecurities and questions his ability to create. Persona writing, a method of borrowing the voice and temperament of accomplished writers, offers him imaginative distance and perspective on his own negative inclinations.In this candid and generous book, Schultz reflects on his early life in an immigrant neighborhood of upstate New York, his first writing experiments inspired by Ernest Hemingway and John Keats, his struggles with dyslexia, and the failures he witnessed in his father's life and his own.
About the Author
PHILIP SCHULTZ won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for his most recent book of poems, Failure. His poetry and fiction have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, the Nation, the New Republic, and the Paris Review, among other magazines. In addition, he is the founder and director of the Writers Studio in New York.
