First Words: Earliest Writing from Favorite Contemporary Authors Paperback - 2000

First line

WHEN MARGARET ATWOOD WAS in high school, she wrote about political repression, class inequality, and the difficult choices facing women-themes that continue to appear in her more than twenty-five published books of fiction and poetry.

From the rear cover

Editor Paul Mandelbaum persuaded twenty-two authors to share their childhood writings and their treasured photographs. What he's collected is a fascinating revelation of young creative minds at work, wrestling with early versions of ideas that were to take hold of their writings in later years.

Of course, the young Michael Crichton would describe what goes on in a dissection lab. Of course, Madeleine L'Engle would wonder about space and the meaning of eternity. Margaret Atwood would questions conventional female behavior, arguing for the right to smoke cigars. And Stephen King would write a macabre story of slicing and piercing at age nine.

First Words is an inspiration to budding writers, encouraging teachers, and just plain readers.

FIRST WORDS features the early works of: Margaret Atwood, Roy Blunt, Jr., Paul Bowles, Pat Conroy, Michael Crichton, Rita Dove, Clyde Edgerton, Gail Godwin, Allan Gurganus, Charles Johnson, Stephen King, Maxine Hong Kingston, Ursula K. Le Guin, Madeleine L'Engle, Jill McCorkle, Norman Mailer, Joyce Carol Oates, William Styron, Amy Tan, John Updike, Gore Vidal, Tobias Wolf

Media reviews

Citations

• Library Journal, 04/15/2000, Page 88