"This book is designed to show writers ways of maintaining a personal presence in their writing no matter what the subject, audience, or discourse. Whatever you write and however you write about it, you write best, we believe, if you think about writing as an interaction between yourself and your reader.".

"Much of what we offer consists of practical advice about writing drawn from short, vivid pieces representing a broad spectrum of view points, situations, styles, and subjects. Part of our goal is, indeed, simply to offer useful tips, to show how certain tools of composition can be used, and to offer the opportunity for practicing their use.

Our larger goal, however, is to challenge on ethical and political grounds the assumption that writing personally and writing professionally or publicly are necessarily opposed to one another."--BOOK JACKET.