McConnell, a writer, teacher, and fiction editor for the Bellevue Literary Review, studied with Kurt Vonnegut at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop from 1965 to 1967—during the time he was writing Slaughterhouse Five—and the two later became friends. In the first book devoted to the great novelist as a teacher, McConnell has gathered everything she could find among Vonnegut’s papers that reflects his ideas about the art and craft of writing. A unique look into the mind of a master, supported by McConnell’s personal reflections and philosophies, this book is both an invaluable primer on how to approach and shape fiction and a glimpse of Vonnegut’s own goals, ambitions, and personality.