The best stories, Sister Fox knows, are truest when they come trotting slantwise loping towards you as if they’re going away. Sister Fox knows so many secrets: why the chickadee sings in the lilac bush, where the best places are to bark at the moon, how to see an owl on a winter night. And Sister Fox knows the secret of how to catch poems and stories. She knows how to tell from their plumage where is coming from and where it might be heading. She’s learned through long practice when to chase her tail and when to scan the sky for a song. And in this book, Sister Fox will whisper those secrets to you—if you believe her. Bestselling author Jane Yolen brings us this delightful new collection of poems on the art and craft of writing. Sometimes whimsical, often amusing, and always a wonder and a delight, Sister Fox’s Field Guide to the Writing Life showcases Yolen at her finest poetic form, ably complimented by Laura Rae’s sensitive illustrations. From the good-humoured, earthy wisdom of ‘The Muse Speaks’, to the snappish introspection of ‘Keep on Singing’, to the sparkling magic of ‘The Storyteller’, these poems enchant and dazzle and amuse. They linger in the mind and colour the imagination long after Sister Fox has closed the book. This is a collection no writer, poet, or lover of words should be without. What Readers are Saying: Reading Sister Fox was like watching a master magician explain exactly how each trick is planned and executed during their performance. And even though you have been shown the secrets; peeked behind the curtain and seen the ribs and blood and sawdust of craft, you can’t help but marvel and delight in the skill and then, blinking ever so briefly, the moment of magic happens, and your heart fills with wonder and astonishment. Jane Yolen—wordsmith—has written art disguised as Instruction Manual. –Richard Michelson, Poet Laureate of Northampton, Mass. Jane Yolen, beloved by generations of young readers, invites us all in this beautiful, generous book to be: “You at your leisure now reading my heart.” Her poems about the writing life “crack open the common world | like a walnut struck with a hammer.” She does not speak “the coarse, cruel, easy lies | a poet must never speak” because “Truth sits uneasy on any horse | [. . .] breathing in the dust, | and like God, breathing out life.” This is familiar Yolen magic: terror and delight, breathing out this time poems for grown-up readers and a wise “field guide” for writers. –Pat Schneider, Author of How the Light Gets In: Writing as a Spiritual Practice, &c.