Cover Reveal for The RMP Field Guide to Writing the Lyric Essay
We are thrilled to reveal the cover of our newest Field Guide, joining the award-winning series in September 2026, The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing the Lyric Essay, edited by Heidi Czerwiec and Lee Horikoshi Roripaugh!
Huge thanks to Pamela Callahan for more amazing crow artwork to continue the Field Guide cover tradition and to Heather Butterfield for designing the cover!
Preordering for The RMP Field Guide to Writing the Lyric Essay will begin in May 2026!
Book details:
The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing the Lyric Essay:
Insights and Prompts from Contemporary Writers and Teachers
Edited by Heidi Czerwiec and Lee Horikoshi Roripaugh
Print ISBN: 978-1-941628-39-3
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-941628-40-9
Featuring Essays From: Chelsea Biondolillo, KJ Cerankowski, Ching-In Chen, Oliver de la Paz, Danielle Cadena Deulen, Camille T. Dungy, Jeannine Hall Gailey, Rigoberto González, torrin a. greathouse, Kimiko Hahn, Lily Hoàng, Michael Kleber-Diggs, Rowan McCandless, Sarah Minor, Rajiv Mohabir, Vi Khi Nào, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Natanya Ann Pulley, Diane Seuss, Sun Yung Shin, Brian Turner, Katrina Vandenberg, Julie Marie Wade, Chaun Webster, The Cyborg Jillian Weise, and Marco Wilkinson
The fifth volume in the immensely popular Field Guide series, The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing the Lyric Essay gives readers an extraordinary window into the methods of 26 expert practitioners at the leading edge of this ever-evolving genre.
With original craft essays, exercises, and examples, each contributor offers reflection and instruction on how lyric essays can be constructed and what makes them unique. As experts in the field, they offer their various approaches to creative nonfiction that uses an essay form, but is lyric in function, meaning that it pays special attention to patterning in language and the resonances of sound and imagery. The anthology’s expertise spans possible forms (braid, fragment, hermit crab, zuihitsu), lyric techniques (anaphora, fractal repetition, word associations, use of white space), and lyric processes (incorporating research or visual elements, engineering leaps, sustaining a longform lyric essay). Editors Heidi Czerwiec and Lee Horikoshi Roripaugh further illuminate the genre in their introduction, exploring the history of the lyric essay and its vital place in contemporary literature. This field guide is an indispensable addition to the bookshelf of any reader, writer, or instructor intrigued by this inventive and expressive genre.