Bird By Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

Anne Lamott is an American novelist and essayist. Her first novel, Hard Laughter, was inspired by the end of her father’s life. Anne Lamott’s father—the writer Kenneth Lamott—taught her many of her early lessons in writing, and having the opportunity to share her work with him before his death was an important part of her grieving process. In the introduction of Bird by Bird, Anne explains that she wanted to be a writer because she wanted to be an “artistic, a free spirit [...] working-class person in charge of her own life” (xv). This was partially based on seeing her father work as a writer.

In addition to publishing almost 20 books of fiction and nonfiction over the course of her long career, Lamott has taught for many years at The University of California Davis and at creative writing conferences across the country. In the book, she discusses the mutually sustaining relationship between her writing and teaching practices. The lessons in Bird by Bird are drawn from the advice she offers to her students.

Lamott identifies primarily as a writer, and in Bird by Bird she offers a personal definition of what that identity means: She says, “We’re mimics, we’re parrots—we’re writers” (177).