In Fact: The Best of Creative Nonfiction

by Lee Gutkind, Annie Dillard

Overview

A cross section of the famous and those bound to become so, this collection is a riveting experience highlighting the expanding importance of this dramatic and exciting new genre.

Creative nonfiction, also known as narrative nonfiction, liberated journalism by inviting writers to dramatize, interpret, speculate, and even re-create their subjects. Lee Gutkind collects twenty-five essays that flourished in this new turf, all originally published in the groundbreaking journal he founded, Creative Nonfiction, now in its tenth anniversary year.

Many of the writers here are crossing genres—from poetry to fiction to nonfiction. Annie Dillard provides the introduction, while Gutkind discusses the creative and ethical parameters of this new genre. The selections themselves are broad and fascinating. Lauren Slater is a therapist in the institution where she was once a patient. John Edgar Wideman reacts passionately to the unjust murder of Emmett Till. Charles Simic contemplates raucous gatherings at his Uncle Boris's apartment, while John McPhee creates a rare, personal, album quilt of his own life. Terry Tempest Williams speaks on the decline of the prairie dog, and Madison Smartt Bell invades Haiti. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393326659
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	11/17/2004
Pages:	480
Sales rank:	688,043
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Lee Gutkind is the founder and editor of the literary journal Creative Nonfiction and a pioneer in the field of narrative nonfiction. Gutkind is also the editor of In Fact and Becoming a Doctor, the author of Almost Human, and has written books about baseball, health care, travel, and technology. A Distinguished Writer in Residence at Arizona State University, he lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Tempe, Arizona.

Annie Dillard is a short story writer, novelist, and poet. She is a member of the Academy of Arts and Letters and has received fellowship grants from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. After living for five years in the Pacific Northwest, she now lives on the East Coast with her family.

Table of Contents

	Introduction: Notes for Young Writers	XI
	The Creative Nonfiction Police?	XIX
	Acknowledgments	XXXV
	Three Spheres	3
	Looking at Emmett Till	24
	Shunned	49
	An Album Quilt	71
	Dinner at Uncle Boris's	85
	Prayer Dogs	92
	What Is It We Really Harvestin' Here?	109
	The Brown Study	119
	Killing Wolves	133
	Being Brians	163
	Language at Play	174
	Finders Keepers: The Story of Joey Coyle	189
	Notes from a Difficult Case	226
	Adventures in Celestial Navigation	245
	Leaving Babylon: A Walk Through the Jewish Divorce Ceremony	269
	Gray Area: Thinking with a Damaged Brain	288
	Joe Stopped By	307
	In the Woods	318
	Sa'm Pedi	331
	Going Native	356
	Chimera	368
	Mixed-Blood Stew	382
	Why I Ride	395
	Delivering Lily	419