University of Maine at Presque Isle Professor of English and Creative Writing Richard Lee Zuras has a new book—his fourth—that will be released on Dec. 7. Mining Your Past: A Creative Writing Professor’s Guide: Writing Stories, Poetry, & Song Lyrics, published by Belle Isle Books, will be available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

According to Belle Isle Books, in this accessible and informative writing guide, Zuras skillfully combines his previous written works and personal histories with concrete tools for any reader looking to integrate their own pasts into authentic writing. Reader-focused, Mining Your Past provides its audience tangible methods for uncovering their unique worldview in order to create more compelling and genuine storytelling.

Readers will step away with a greater faith in their potential as a writer and a better understanding of their own pasts, presents, and futures, making this—according to Belle Isle Books—an essential read for novice writers searching for a way to share their stories, as only they can tell them.

Zuras earned his MFA as a McNeese scholar under the auspices of Pulitzer Prize winner in fiction Robert Olen Butler and two-time Iowa Poetry Prize winner John Wood. He also did graduate work at the University of Colorado, George Mason University, and the University of North Dakota, where he worked under James Robison. He has taught creative writing for more than 20 years, and has held writing conference scholarships at Bread Loaf, Wesleyan University, and Pirate’s Alley Faulkner.

He is the author of the novels The Bastard Year and The Honeymoon Corruption as well as the poetry collection Birds at the Post Office, all published through Brandylane Publishers. His stories and poems have appeared in dozens of literary journals, including Story Quarterly, South Dakota Review, Weber Journal, Big Muddy, Jabberwock Review, Lake Effect, Chicago Quarterly Review, Laurel Review, Yemassee, Xavier Review, Confrontation, Red Rock Review, and Passages North.

Mining Your Past will be available starting Dec. 7 on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and elsewhere. For more information, check out the book page on the Belle Isle Books website.