Books by Michael Martone

Fictitious biographical snippets that celebrate the sky-written words of early aviation and the life of the man behind them.

This collection of more than twenty-five essays, both meditative and formally inventive, considers all kinds of subjects: everyday objects such as keys and hats, plus concepts of time and place; the memoir; writing; the essay itself; and Michael Martone's friendship with the writers David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Franzen, and Kurt Vonnegut.

Describes how the author's mother, as the dean of girls at a high school in Fort Wayne, Indiana, ""constructed a nostalgic past out of nothing.

A playfully contrarian take on the teaching and learning of creative writing. The pieces are drawn from a career spent loosening the creative strictures on writing. Including articles, public addresses, essays, interviews, and an eulogy, these writings vary in form but are unified in addressing the technical and artistic issues that face writers.

Places like Martone's hometown of Fort Wayne, as well as Peru, Elkhart, and Indianapolis, and narrators such as Colonel Sanders, Alfred Kinsey, and James Dean's high school English teacher all come to life with the author's trademark blend of irreverent humor and incisive reality.