The Arvon Book of Literary Non-Fiction is an essential guide to writing in a wide range of genres, from travel writing to feminist polemic and writing on nature, history, death, friendship and sexuality.

Part 1 explores the full range of genres and asks the question: what is literary non-fiction?

Part 2 includes tips by such bestselling literary non-fiction writers as: Lisa Appignanesi, Rosemary Bailey, Gillian Beer, Bidisha, Lizzie Collingham, William Dalrymple, Stevie Davies, Colin Grant, Rahila Gupta, Philip Hoare, Siri Hustvedt, Alice Kessler-Harris, Barry Lopez, Richard Mabey, Robert Macfarlane, Sara Maitland, Neil McKenna, Caroline Moorehead, Susie Orbach, Jennifer Potter, Susan Sellers, Dava Sobel, Diana Souhami, Dale Spender, Francis Spufford, Daniel Swift, Colin Thubron, Natasha Walter, Sara Wheeler and Simon Winchester.

Part 3 offers practical advice - from planning and researching to writing a proposal and finding an agent or a publisher when your work is complete.

Sally Cline, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and Advisory Fellow to the Royal Literary Fund, is an award winning biographer and short fiction writer. Her 12 books include biographies of Zelda Fitzgerald, Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett, and Radclyffe Hall, (shortlisted for USA LAMBDA award).She is currently writing a Brief Life of Dashiell Hammett. Former Writer in Residence at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, she is co-Series Editorof Bloomsbury's eight volume Arvon series onwriting.

Midge Gillies has written seven non-fiction books, including two highly acclaimed biographies: Amy Johnson: Queen of Air about the record-breaking pilot, and Marie Lloyd: The One and Only, a life of the Edwardian music hall star. Her most recent book is The Barbed-Wire University: The Real Lives of Allied Prisoners of War in the Second World War. She is a part-time tutor at Cambridge University's Institute of Continuing Education.