PRESS RELEASE — Brainard’s Fundamentals of Creative Writing, Revised and Expanded Edition

PRESS RELEASE — For release September 1, 2024

PALH, 2024, soft­cov­er, 188 pages ISBN 9781953716415 (Release date is Sep­tem­ber 1, 2024)

Ebook ISBN 9781953716422 — Kin­dle, Barnes&Noble, Rakuten Kobo, Apple Books, Scribd, Toli­no, Over­Drive, Bib­lio­the­ca, Bak­er&Tay­lor, Vivlio, Bor­row Box, and more

BRAINARD’S HOW-TO-WRITE  CREATIVE WRITING BOOK RELEASED

PALH (Philip­pine Amer­i­can Lit­er­ary House) announces the release of Fun­da­men­tals of Cre­ative Writ­ing, Revised and Expand­ed Edi­tion by Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard.

Fun­da­men­tals of Cre­ative Writ­ing, Revised and Expand­ed Edi­tion is a prac­ti­cal how-to-write book that can be used as a text book or it can be read by those inter­est­ed in learn­ing how to write. The author Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard, an award-win­ning fic­tion writer, who taught for over 25 years at UCLA Extension’s Writ­ers Pro­gram and oth­er uni­ver­si­ties, shares all the tools need­ed to write fic­tion and cre­ative non-fic­tion. She breaks down the basic ele­ments of cre­ative writ­ing such as set­ting, scene, char­ac­ter, con­flict, dia­logue, plot, and so on into sec­tions. Each sec­tion starts with a con­cept, fol­lowed by relat­ed exer­cis­es, and a sto­ry or two to illus­trate the cre­ative writ­ing com­po­nent just discussed.

This book includes the author’s advice to begin­ning writ­ers, and a lengthy inter­view of the author, in which the author dis­cuss­es her back­ground, what got her start­ed in writ­ing, the strug­gles she faced, her devel­op­ment as a writer. She also dis­cuss­es the gen­e­sis of some of her sto­ries includ­ing her three novels.

The author’s no-non­sense approach makes this book use­ful to many instruc­tors of Cre­ative Writ­ing who will appre­ci­ate the straight­for­ward guid­ance, writ­ing activ­i­ties, and com­ple­men­tary sto­ries in the book. This book, Fun­da­men­tals of Cre­ative Writ­ing, Revised and Expand­ed Edi­tion offers more infor­ma­tion to demys­ti­fy and explain the writ­ing process thus enhanc­ing the learn­ing expe­ri­ence of the begin­ning writer.

An ear­li­er edi­tion of this book was pub­lished in 2009 by Anvil in the Philip­pines, now out of print. The book was used by many teach­ers in their class­rooms. Dur­ing the time of Covid, and to help teach­ers and stu­dents, the author made the first edi­tion Fun­da­men­tals of Cre­ative Writ­ing avail­able online for free. Thou­sands availed of this pan­dem­ic free offer.

The author, Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard, is the author and edi­tor of over twen­ty books, the recent ones being: her Select­ed Short Sto­ries, which won the 40^th Nation­al Book Award, Grow­ing Up Fil­ipino 3, which was nom­i­nat­ed for the 41^st Nation­al Book Award.

The pub­lish­er PALH has pub­lished writ­ings by not­ed fic­tion­ist Lin­da Ty-Casper, Veron­i­ca Montes, and sev­er­al antholo­gies of Fil­ipino, Fil­ipino-Amer­i­can, and Asian Amer­i­can topics.

PALH books can be found in Ama­zon, Barnes and Noble, and Bookshop.org. PALH’s ebooks can be found in Kin­dle, Apple Books, Kobo, Over­Drive, Toli­no, Bak­er & Tay­lor, among many servers.

For more infor­ma­tion, please con­tact palh@aol.com or palhbooks@gmail.com.

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PRAISE for Fun­da­men­tals of Cre­ative Writ­ing, Revised and Expand­ed Edition

Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard has writ­ten a won­der­ful resource for stu­dents of cre­ative writ­ing.  This book, Fun­da­men­tals of Cre­ative Writ­ing, Revised and Expand­ed Edi­tion, pro­vides stu­dents with prac­ti­cal steps that tru­ly work. The strate­gies pre­sent­ed in this book are a prod­uct of the authors over twen­ty years of teach­ing cre­ative writ­ing. She is also a pro­lif­ic writer who has writ­ten numer­ous short sto­ries, nov­els, and non-fic­tion books.

Edmun­do Edward F. Lit­ton, Ed.D.

Dis­tin­guished Pro­fes­sor of Education

Loy­ola Mary­mount University

 

This book, Fun­da­men­tals of Cre­ative Writ­ing, Revised and Expand­ed Edi­tion, describes the “essen­tials” of cre­ative writ­ing, not only from a tech­ni­cal per­spec­tive, but also by unveil­ing how cre­ative writ­ing leads us to imag­i­na­tive­ly engage and act upon the world. Brainard’s struc­ture reminds us that, above and beyond tech­nique, the most impor­tant thing a writer needs is a gen­uine love of sto­ry and a respect for the pow­er of words.”

Rocío G. Davis

Pro­fes­sor of Amer­i­can Lit­er­a­ture, Uni­ver­si­ty of Navar­ra, Spain

 

Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard’s Fun­da­men­tals of Cre­ative Writ­ing, Revised and Expand­ed Edi­tion, is a mar­velous text­book that com­bines use­ful tech­ni­cal advice on craft with beau­ti­ful prac­ti­cal exam­ples in her own sto­ries. Brainard’s treat­ments of writer­ly voice and left brain/right brain the­o­ry as it con­nects to writ­ing are among the best avail­able in today’s writ­ing text­books. Her sto­ry exam­ples cov­er a vari­ety of sto­ry types, tech­niques, points of view, and his­tor­i­cal as well as con­tem­po­rary top­ics and themes. This book will indeed help writ­ing stu­dents write strong sto­ries and improve their craft. Bra­va, Ms. Brainard.

Vince Gotera

Pro­fes­sor of Eng­lish, Uni­ver­si­ty of North­ern Iowa

For­mer Edi­tor of the North Amer­i­can Review

 

Tags: how to write cre­ative writ­ing,  fun­da­men­tals of writ­ing, basics of cre­ative writ­ing, essen­tials of cre­ative writ­ing, begin­ning cre­ative writ­ing, fun­da­men­tals of fic­tion writ­ing, fun­da­men­tals of cre­ative non-fic­tion, cre­ative writ­ing basics. cre­ative writ­ing essentials