Writer: How to craft nonfiction stories that touch your readers' hearts, souls & funny bones Paperback – September 10, 2025

After more than half a century of award-winning nonfiction writing and two decades of leading Oregon's Beachside Writers Workshop, Bob Welch finally shares the secrets to writing that will help you leave your readers changed forever. Writer is unlike any other book on the craft, blending the mental side of the craft with practical, fingers-on-the-keyboard steps to painting with words. The book is sprinkled with the author's trademark touches of heart, humor and hope. Fun, feisty and philosophical, Writer will stretch any nonfiction writer, especially those new to the craft, with ideas, approaches and advice not found elsewhere. From the myth of writer's block to the wonder of showing instead of telling, Welch shares the concepts that helped him become a two-time winner of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists' "Best Writing" award, helped him write the 2019 Book of the Year (as chosen by Track & Field Writers of America) and helped him become an Oregon Book Award finalist. Welch, a former (Eugene, Ore.) Register-Guard columnist and adjunct professor of journalism at the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication, breaks his book into seven parts: Mindset, Obstacles, Tools, Gather, Write, Genres and Process. The result is a tour de force filled with hundreds of examples of his own writing and the writing of others. It includes photos, graphs — even breakdowns of his own columns, why he wrote them as he did. As the author of the popular Heart, Humor & Hope Substack column, Welch offers a personal style that reflects his "respect the reader" approach to writing. A former National Writers Workshop presenter, he views Writer as a culmination of a lifetime of learning about the craft he loves. Read more