Linda Wagner: 65 books

Understanding Sharon Olds explores this Pulitzer Prize–winning poet’s major themes, characters, life, and career, including her often-controversial portrayals of family dysfunction, sexuality, and violence against women. In this first book dedicated entirely to the poetry of Sharon Olds, Russell...

Understanding Suzan-Lori Parks is a critical study of a playwright and screenwriter who was the first African American woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Suzan-Lori Parks is also the recipient of a MacArthur Genius Award, a Whiting Writers Award, a CalArts/Alpert Award in the Arts, two...

As a renowned novelist, journalist, biographer, playwright, speaker, aspiring politician, filmmaker, and public intellectual, Norman Mailer was one of the most prominent American literary and cultural figures of the second half of the twentieth century. Over the course of his expansive sixty-year...

In this first book-length analysis of Ron Rash's fiction and poetry, John Lang covers all of Rash’s books published through 2013 and offers key insights about his aims, themes, literary techniques and allusions, and major literary influences. Understanding Ron Rash introduces readers to the major...

Henry Veggian introduces readers to one of the most influential American writers of the last half- century. Winner of the National Book Award, American Book Award, and the first Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction, Don Delillo is the author of short stories, screenplays, and fifteen novels...

This book aims to both describe and analyze the way Steinbeck learned the writing craft. It begins with his immersion in the short story, some years after he stopped attending Stanford University. Aside from a weak first novel, his professional writing career began with the publication in 1932...

Understanding Gary Shteyngart, the first comprehensive examination of Shteyngart’s novels and memoir, introduces readers to one of the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful contemporary American authors. Born in Leningrad in 1972, Shteyngart immigrated to the United States in 1979,...

Andre Dubus (1936–1999), the author of short stories, novellas, essays, and two novels, is perhaps best known as the author of the story “Killings,” which was adapted into the film In the Bedroom, a nominee for five Academy Awards in 2001. His work received many awards, including the PEN New...

Alex Engebretson offers the first comprehensive study of Marilynne Robinson’s fiction and essays to date, providing an overview of the author’s life, themes, and literary and religious influences. Understanding Marilynne Robinson examines this author of three highly acclaimed novels and recipient...

In Understanding Chang-rae Lee, Amanda M. Page provides the first critical survey of the work of one of America’s most acclaimed contemporary novelists. Chang-rae Lee, the Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Professor of English at Stanford University, has been the recipient of numerous awards including...

John Guare, one of the most innovative and influential contemporary American playwrights of the last sixty years, is best known for such works as House of Blue Leaves, winner of an Obie Award, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best American Play, and four Tony Awards, and Six Degrees of...

The winner of every major American literary prize, John Updike (1932–2009) was one of the most popular and prolific novelists of his time and a major cultural figure who traced the high point and fall of midcentury American self-confidence and energy. A superb stylist with sixty books to his credit,...

Since the release of her first novel, The Last Day the Dogbushes Bloomed, in 1968, Lee Smith has published nearly twenty books, including novels, short stories, and memoirs. She has received an O. Henry Award, Sir Walter Raleigh Award, Robert Penn Warren Prize for Fiction, and a Reader’s Digest...

Maxine Hong Kingston is known for using a distinctive blend of autobiography, fantasy, and folklore to explore the history, experience, and identity of Chinese Americans. This is exemplified in her first book, The Woman Warrior, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction, a bestseller,...