Saturday Review: “A Writer’s Toolkit,” a review by Sayantani Dasgupta of Nora Shalaway Carpenter’s Spinning Toward the Sun: Essays on Writing, Resilience, & the Creative Life (2025) in NCLR Online Spring 2026.
Dasgupta’s review of Carpenter’s collection of essays, Spinning Toward the Sun: Essays on Writing, Resilience, & the Creative Life, offers a great recommendation to creatives who currently struggle with their writing. Dasgupta writes the book “fits perfectly well with other books on the shelf about how creative people do it,” pointing out essays such as “Laughing, Crying, and Barreling Toward Acceptance” and “Missed Connections, Misunderstandings, and Misbeliefs.” It works well as a guide, offering prompts and suggestions on strategies that can be used to get out of a writer’s slump.
The review features artwork by the reviewer based on the book’s prompts. All profits from Spinning Toward the Sun: Essays on Writing, Resilience, & the Creative Life will go to two groups, Asheville, NC, and World Central Kitchen, to provide resources for victims of Hurricane Helene. As Dasgupta writes, “Ultimately, this is a book with a generous and mighty heart at its core, and more of us, and our students and families, will do well to consume art like this.”
Read the entire review here and buy a copy of Spinning Toward the Sun: Essays on Writing, Resilience, & the Creative Life from the publisher or from your local independent bookstore.
