Sixteen lectures, among the best delivered to small passionate audiences at the many writers' conferences held each year, are now for the first time available to a broader audience.

In Writing It Down for James, the second in the Writers on Life and Craft series, Pattiann Rogers uses science as a jumping-off point for spirituality; Stephen Corey finds imperfect translation to be a rich language of its own when it occurs in his infant daughter-to-be's Korean adoption papers; and other writers tell about learning to read, loving to travel, and writing one's own story.