In the "Books that Made You" series, we're taking a look at the books that made us who we are. This time, we asked you what book made you a writer. After scrutinizing our highly scientific social media poll, we present to you this non-exhaustive list of Grubbie-approved gateway reads.

GrubStreet Instructor, marketing consultant, writer, and mother of two, Allison Pottern Hoch knows how to squeeze maximum creativity from every spare second. She’ll be covering this topic and more in her class Writing Like a Parent, Parenting Like a Writer on July 7th, but until then read on to find out how to engage creatively right now

This month of DeadDarlings, Novel Incubator alum and author Rachel Barenbaum interviewed Leni Zumas about her new novel, Red Clocks (Little, Brown, 2018). Leni Zumas is also the author of Farewell Navigator: Stories (Open City, 2008) and the novel The Listeners (Tin House, 2012), which was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. Leni lives in Portland, Oregon, where she is an associate professor in the MFA and BFA programs at Portland State University.

For many of us book lovers, we love to keep track of books we've read and easily discover new books. We also love to talk about them, and to tell others about the books that really impacted us

It can be disheartening to hit a stumbling block when working on a piece of writing. But GrubStreet Instructor Ben Berman helps us see how setbacks are often a natural and necessary part of the creative process.

The other day I was cooking dinner when my five-year-old crawled on over to me. Goo-goo, ga-ga, she said, putting her arms in the air. I picked her up and patted her back until she burped.