With one exception, the essays in Nicholas Delbanco's new collection do not target an LGBT audience, but anyone who has an interest in contemporary writing will enjoying reading the passionate, often lyrical pieces contained in volume six of The Hopwood Lectures. The ten authors, whose lectures span the years 1999-2008, have contributed fascinating, often haunting reflections on the craft of writing. They represent a diverse array of genres and voices, from screen writer Lawrence Kasadan to the acclaimed non-fiction author Susan Orlean.

The echoing notion throughout the collection is inspiration and its roots. Kasadan reflects on his early exposure to the film "Lawrence of Arabia," an experience which convinced him to take up dramatic writing under the direction of Kenneth Rowe at the University of Michigan in the late 60s. Poet Donald Hall's contribution, "Starting and Keeping On," examines the poet's motives, encouraging writers to read the older poets for inspiration. His discourse on size and scale in poetry takes aim at the work of poets like Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot. Andrea Barrett's piece, "Four Voyages," convinces us that her experiences in reading the journals and letters of nineteenth-century Arctic explorers shaped her conception of the writer as explorer. The novelist Mary Gordon offers up "Flannery's Kiss," a thought provoking, darkly humorous study of the parallels between Gordon's own career and that of Flannery O'Connor. Essays by Charles Baxter, Richard Howard, Susan Stamberg and Susan Orlean round out the volume.

LGBT readers may be most interested in the contribution by Edmund White, entitled "Writing Gay." White espouses the value of writing as a way to explore one's sexual identity. He draws on his own career as a preeminent gay novelist and biographer to show the progress of gay writing and depiction of gay life in contemporary literature. He discusses those writers who most inspired him, (Proust, Colette, and Genet), and his decision to emulate what he admired so much in their work during his early career. The focus of this lecture is how writing the biographies of Jean Genet and Marcel Proust influenced White's autobiographical novel, The Farewell Symphony. White asserts that in order to write accurately about gay lives, the biographer must understand and empathize with the situations and events that shaped those lives -- gay life, White contends, cannot be translated into straight terms.

The Hopwood Lectures are delivered each year as a part of the prize ceremony for the Hopwood Creative Writing Awards, approximately $135,000 in prize money awarded to graduate and undergraduate students at the University of Michigan. The editor of this collection, Nicholas Delbanco, is Robert Frost Collegiate Professor of English Language at the University of Michigan and Chair of the Hopwood Committee. This exceptional collection will provide inspiration to both seasoned and novice writers.