Writers and Their Notebooks
â€œI salute the editor of this valuable collection, Diana Raab, who has done such a sensitive job of gathering these diverse, eloquent, and experienced voices and encouraging their thoughtful, heartbreaking, rambunctious, free flights of testimony and speculation into being. Freedom is a frequent theme in these pages. The freedom to try out things, to write clumsy sentences when no one is looking, to be unfair, immature, even to be stupid. No one can expect to write well who would not first take the risk of writing badly. The writerâ€™s notebook is a safe place for such experiments to be undertaken.â€â€” Phillip Lopate, from the foreword