My friend Zach Shore came over for a little dinner party the other night. I'd made four different types of meatballs (lamb, beef, turkey, and veggie sausage) for us to try, in honor of the "pasta bars" that I remember from 1990s eating establishments and country club buffet lines. Curiously, no one at the table recalled these "pasta bars," but they enjoyed the meatballs anyway. And, more importantly, Zach turned me on to a great book: Thinking Like Your Editor by Susan Rabiner and Alfred Fortunato. Then I discovered The Forest for the Trees by Betsy Lerner, and Writing and Selling Your Memoir by Paula Balzer.
Rebecca Black
poet and writer