Before Harry Potter came along, Charlotte’s Web was the best-selling children’s book in America. Generations of kids found real magic in Zuckerman’s barn, through young Fern’s relationship with Wilbur the pig and Charlotte the spider. Charlotte’s Web set its talking animals alongside realistic lessons about the cycles of life and death in the barnyard, a naturalism that emerged from author E.B. White’s own farm in Maine and his lifelong fascination with animals.

The Story of Charlotte’s Web, Michael Sims’ slice-of-life biography of E.B. White, focuses on those elements that directly contributed to the creation of Charlotte’s Web. The first section of the book is stunning, an almost novelistic recreation of the child Elwyn’s imaginative world. The youngest of seven children, Elwyn was shy and anxious, happiest when rambling alone in Maine’s lake country or watching chicks hatch in a barn. He was equally drawn to reading and writing about the natural world, becoming a published author at age nine with a poem entitled “To a Mouse.” Sims shows us how Elwyn’s childhood reading, from the animal stories of Ernest Thompson Seton to Don Marquis’ comic verses about Archy and Mehitabel, influenced the writer White would become.

Sims’ imaginative re-enactment of pivotal scenes in White’s life is unconventional yet compelling. A wonderful example of this occurs when 26-year-old Andy (as White was known after college) peruses a magazine stand in Grand Central Station in 1925: Sims vividly details the covers of Film Fun and Time magazine before focusing his lens on Andy’s life-changing purchase of the first issue of The New Yorker. The staging of this scene helps Sims build out the literary and cultural contexts in which Andy becomes a professional writer, grounding the drama in solid historical research.

The adult Andy—successful New Yorker writer, married to editor Katharine White, dividing his time between Manhattan and a farm in Maine—is perhaps not so intriguing as the child Elwyn, until he becomes fascinated with orb weaver spiders, spending two years obsessively studying their habits in preparation for the creation of Charlotte A. Calvatica. Sims deftly handles the writing and publication of Charlotte’s Web, building thumbnail portraits of the legendary children’s book editor Ursula Nordstrom and illustrator Garth Williams. But this biography is at its best in the barnyard, illuminating that “sacred space” E.B. White brought to life in his beloved children’s book.

One of the most persistent literary controversies is the question of who really wrote the plays and sonnets attributed to William Shakespeare. The first documented challenge to his authorship of the works did not appear until 1785, 169 years after his death. But since then, as noted Shakespearean scholar James Shapiro demonstrates in his enlightening and highly entertaining Contested Will, it has never stopped.

In a marvelous display of literary detection, Shapiro traces the origins of the various alternative theories with candidates such as Francis Bacon and the Earl of Oxford. He shows why the theories arose when they did and exposes the forgeries and deception as well as the misunderstandings of Shakespeare’s age that kept them alive. Along the way we meet such fascinating and now-forgotten personalities as the two most influential persons in the controversy, popular lecturer Delia Bacon, the allegedly “mad” American woman (she spent the last two years of her life in an asylum) who first proposed Francis Bacon, and J.T. Looney, the British schoolmaster who was the first to put forth the name of Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford. Mark Twain, Sigmund Freud, Henry James and Helen Keller were among the many others who were also certain that the glover’s son from Stratford could not possibly have written works of such sophistication and elegance.

Shapiro, the author of the widely praised A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599, which received the Samuel Johnson Prize in England, emphasizes that Shakespeare should not be seen as “our contemporary” and that he was not “as universal” as we often like to think of him. He also explores the process that, after Shakespeare’s death, led to setting the genius of his works apart from other writers of his age. Among other treats, there is a rich discussion of Henry James’ analysis of The Tempest, perhaps the best essay written when that play was regarded as the last one Shakespeare wrote and the most autobiographical.

The author is keenly aware that it is much easier to explain unfounded assumptions than to show that Shakespeare wrote the works attributed to him. In the brilliant last section of the book, Shapiro presents evidence that convinces him that Shakespeare was indeed the author. Among much else, the author of the plays had to have intimate knowledge of the actors in the King’s Men, Shakespeare’s company, and be a shrewd judge of each one’s abilities. In the printed text there are examples of Shakespeare’s writing the name of the actor playing the part rather than the character’s name. Secondly, much that his fellow writers wrote about Shakespeare has survived, and in even private documents, where his “true identity” surely would be acknowledged, Shakespeare is the name we read. Shapiro then presents documentation from the last years of Shakespeare’s working life, when he was working with collaborators, writing in a different style, and in a new kind of playhouse.

Shapiro is most concerned that those who think Shakespeare of Stratford did not have the life experience to write the plays overlook “the very thing that makes him so exceptional: his imagination.” This sophisticated and very readable title is pure delight. All readers may not agree with Shapiro’s conclusions, but he certainly convinced me.

There is nothing a writer craves more than to be told she is on the right path, that her creative processes and habits will inevitably produce a head-turning work of fiction—and nothing a writer needs more than to be denied that assurance and told firmly by one who knows to get back to work. The Secret Miracle, edited by Peruvian-American novelist Daniel Alarcón, does both.

In a Q&A format, many notable writers contribute valuable insights. The book’s strength is the range of writers included: literary icons Amy Tan and Mario Vargas Llosa; crime novelist George Pelecanos; household names Stephen King and Daniel Handler (a.k.a. Lemony Snicket); prize-winning novelists Edwidge Danticat, Paul Auster, Jonathan Lethem and Roddy Doyle; and dozens more. The geographical spread is vast: writers live in Cairo, Mexico City, Barcelona, Tel Aviv, Paris and across the United States. Several are published in English in translation. The questions asked range just as far: What, and how, do you read? Is there a book you return to over and over? What do you learn from other art forms? Do you research? Outline? Plan a novel’s structure or let it happen? Identify with a character? Draw from your own life? Writers talk about their schedules, where they write and how they measure a successful day. When do you share a draft, how do you revise, what about false starts?

That breadth is also the book’s weakness. With so many writers on so many topics, some answers are too short to offer much help. Contradictions are inevitable, but delightful, and may fan the occasional flames between writers and readers of literary and genre fiction. Still, it isn’t only genre writers who value plot, or literary novelists who savor language. These people stand on common ground, though their walk and talk varies tremendously.

Proceeds from the book will benefit 826 National, a nonprofit network of tutoring and writing centers in eight cities, named for its original location, at 826 Valencia in San Francisco. In 2009, more than 4,000 volunteers worked with 18,000-plus students ages 6 to 18 on creative and expository writing; offered 266 workshops for students and teachers; provided after-school tutoring for 130 students a day; and produced more than 600 student publications. Each center also sponsors roundtable discussions with published writers.

Read a page of The Secret Miracle when you’re stuck or need a break from your own writing, or if you’re a reader, when you want a glimpse of the world behind the page. Dip in, then get back to work.

Leslie Budewitz’s short stories have appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchock Mystery Magazine, and The Whitefish Review.

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Interview with editor Daniel Alarcón