Top ten books about creative writing

Anthony Anaxagorou is an award-winning poet, fiction writer, essayist, publisher and poetry educator. He has published several volumes of poems and essays, a spoken word EP and a collection of short stories whilst having also written for theatre.

His poetry has appeared on national television and radio as well as being published in various literary magazines and anthologies. He has judged several literary prizes with the most recent being the 2016 BBC Young Writers Award. Currently he works as the writer in residence in several London schools where he teaches poetry and creative writing while also guest lecturing at universities on the subject of poetry, race/identity politics and social inclusion.

In 2015 his poetry and fiction writing won him the Groucho Maverick Award and in 2016 he was shortlisted for the Hospital Club’s H-100 award for most influential people.

Anaxagorou's new book is How To Write It.

At the Guardian he tagged ten top books about creative writing, including:

Feel Free by Zadie Smith

These astute and topical essays dating from 2010 to 2017 demonstrate Smith’s forensic ability to navigate and unpack everything from Brexit to Justin Bieber. Dissecting high philosophical works then bringing the focus back on to her own practice as a fiction writer, her essay The I Who Is Not Me sees Smith extrapolate on how autobiography shapes novel writing, and elucidates her approach to thinking around British society’s tenuous and often binary perspectives on race, class and ethnicity.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue