Unless It Moves the Human Heart

With Unless It Moves the Human Heart, the writer and teacher Roger Rosenblatt offers a guidebook for students, a memoir, and an impassioned argument for the necessity of writing in our world. Unless It Moves the Human Heart details one semester in Rosenblatt’s “Writing Everything” class. In a series of funny, intimate conversations, a diverse group of students grapple with the questions and subjects most important to narrative craft.

In the tradition of Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, Rosenblatt seeking to answer the most profound question of why write? More than a how-to, Unless It Moves the Human Heart is a moving call-to-arms on the value of writing.

“Writing is the cure for the disease of living. Doing it may sometimes feel like an escape from the world, but at its best moments it is an act of rescue. Each of you has his own way of seeing into suffering and error. But you share the desire to save the world from its blights by going deeper into them until they lie exposed. You show up the imperfections of living for what they are. You hope to write them out of existence.”—Excerpt from Unless It Moves the Human Heart