Why I Write

The Why I Write series is based on the Windham-Campbell Lectures, delivered annually to commemorate the awarding of the Donald Windham-Sandy M. Campbell Literature Prizes at Yale University. Administered by Yale's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the series publishes works based on the lecture given by the event's keynote speaker.In Inadvertent, internationally bestselling author Karl Ove Knausgaard reveals his beginnings as a writer and his literary influences; his creative development and his struggles. But this text is more than a window into the writer's frame of mind. It's also a glimmering meditation on literature and creativity-on its limitations and its freedoms. From Jorge Luis Borges to Edward Munch, the text explores Knausgaard's relationship to art that's moved him, and how that art situates itself in our culture. The text is both biographical and philosophical, and raises as many questions as it provides answers.

In the fourth volume in the Why I Write series, the iconic Samuel Delany remembers 50 years of writing and shaping the world of speculative fiction. Science fiction dwells mostly in the realm of possibility, where mysteries proliferate nevertheless, meaning is never static, and “time and history have convinced us that things are not as they seem”. So, too, does all language, argues Samuel Delany, in his vigorous justification for the writing life. Chronicling his struggle with dyslexia, the evolution of his gay and Black identity during the AIDS crisis, and his experiences and relationships through five decades as a writer of fiction and nonfiction, Delany is a longtime observer of language's inner workings. For Delany, the reasons to write are inextricably linked with the habits of reading. Like the number of galaxies in the multiverse, the possibilities are endless, but in the last analysis, we write to discover our own worlds in the worlds of others - and to promote an illusion of their sharing.