Writing About Literature introduces students to critical reading and writing through a thorough and engaging discussion of the field, but also through exercises, interviews, exemplary student and scholarly essays, and visual material. It offers students an insider's guide to the language, issues, approaches, styles, assumptions, and traditions that inform the writing of successful critical essays, and aims to make student writers a part of the world of professional literary criticism. Much of the discussion is structured around ways to analyse and respond to a single work, Stephen Crane's story "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky". The book presents specific examples of both student writing and professional academic writing, showing how to polish an essay from an "F" to an "A".

This second edition is updated throughout and includes a new chapter on "Reading and Writing about Poetry"; the chapter uses Robert Kroetsch's poem "This Part of the Country" as the unit of analysis and includes an interview with the poet about his process.