In this book, Angelou details what brought her mother to send her away, and unearths the well of emotions she experienced long afterward as a result. For the first time, she reveals the triumphs and struggles of being the daughter of Vivian Baxter, an indomitable spirit whose petite size belied her larger-than-life presence, a presence absent during much of the author's early life. When her marriage began to crumble, Vivian famously sent three-year-old...

"The first authorized biography of a great American novelist"--

"Jacqueline Woodson, one of today's finest writers, tells the moving story of her childhood in mesmerizing verse. Raised in South Carolina and New York, Woodson always felt halfway home in each place. In vivid poems, she shares what it was like to grow up as an African American in the 1960s and 1970s, living with the remnants of Jim Crow and her growing awareness of the Civil Rights movement. Touching and powerful, each poem is both accessible and...

In July 1845, Henry David Thoreau built a small cottage in the woods near Walden Pond, Massachusetts. During the two years spend there, he began to write 'Walden', his most important work, a chronicle of his communion with nature that became one of the most influential books in Western literature.

Women writers celebrate and meditate on their acts of defiance, from using well-chosen expletives and engaging in less-than-ideal parenting techniques to getting back at an ex and wearing a stolen Girl Scout badge.

"It's no coincidence that the world's best writers tend to keep diaries. If you faithfully record your life in a journal, you're writing every day--and if you write every day, you become a better writer. David Sedaris has kept a diary for forty years. This means that if you've kept a diary for a year of your life or less, Sedaris is at least forty times better at writing than you are. In his diaries, he's recorded everything that has captured his...

Meet the women writers who defied convention to craft some of literature's strangest tales, from Frankenstein to The Haunting of Hill House and beyond. Curated reading lists point readers to their most spine-chilling tales.