Writing Creative Nonfiction

by Philip Gerard (Editor)

Overview

Experience the power and the promise of working in today' most exciting literary form: Creative Nonfiction

Writing Creative Nonfiction presents more than thirty essays examining every key element of the craft, from researching ideas and structuring the story, to reportage and personal reflection. You'll learn from some of today's top creative nonfiction writers, including:

 • Terry Tempest Williams - Analyze your motivation for writing, its value, and its strength.
 • Alan Cheuse - Discover how interesting, compelling essays can be drawn from every corner of your life and the world in which you live.
 • Phillip Lopate - Build your narrator–yourself–into a fully fleshed-out character, giving your readers a clearer, more compelling idea of who is speaking and why they should listen.
 • Robin Hemley - Develop a narrative strategy for structuring your story and making it cohesive.
 • Carolyn Forche - Master the journalistic ethics of creative nonfiction.
 • Dinty W. Moore - Use satire, exaggeration, juxtaposition, and other forms of humor in creative nonfiction.
 • Philip Gerard - Understand the narrative stance–why and how an author should, or should not, enter into the story.


Through insightful prompts and exercises, these contributors help make the challenge of writing creative nonfiction–whether biography, true-life adventure, memoir, or narrative history–a welcome, rewarding endeavor.

You'll also find an exciting, creative nonfiction "reader" comprising the final third of the book, featuring pieces from Barry Lopez, Annie Dillard, Beverly Lowry, Phillip Lopate, and more–selections so extraordinary, they will teach, delight, inspire, and entertain you for years to come!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781884910500
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	05/10/2001
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	845,287
Product dimensions:	5.96(w) x 8.98(h) x 1.02(d)

Table of Contents

	Introduction: Creative Nonfiction: An Adventure in Lyric, Fact, and Story	1
I.	The Art, the Craft, the Business
	Why I Write	6
	But Tell It Slant: From Poetry to Prose and Back Again	8
	A Braided Heart: Shaping the Lyric Essay	14
	Saying Good-Bye to "Once Upon a Time," or Implementing Postmodernism in Creative Nonfiction	25
	Finding a Story, or Using the Whole Pig	34
	Writing Personal Essays: On the Necessity of Turning Oneself Into a Character	38
	Researching Your Own Life	45
	Taking Yourself Out of the Story: Narrative Stance and the Upright Pronoun	50
	The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner	57
	As Time Goes By: Creating Biography	67
	Twelve Years and Counting: Writing Biography	85
	Not the Killing but Why	97
	Every Hell Is Different: Notes on War Writing	101
	The "New" Literature	104
	Surviving Overseas	114
	The Comfortable Chair: Using Humor in Creative Nonfiction	122
	Getting Published	130
	Avoiding Self-Censorship: A Guide to the Detection of Legal Land Mines	140
II.	Aftershocks--Responses to the Genre
	Learning to Breathe After the Memoir	158
	Excerpts From Fathering Words: The Making of an African American Writer	162
	One Nation, Under the Weather	164
	Becoming the Godfather of Creative Nonfiction	170
III.	Creative Nonfiction Reader
	The Woman Who Slept With One Eye Open	182
	Basha Leah	191
	Excerpt from "Tacos and Manna"	205
	Portrait of My Body	214
	What They Don't Tell You About Hurricanes	223
	Excerpt From Irving Berlin: A Life in Song	230
	It was a time of hope, that was the thing (1927-1930)	240
	The Shadow Knows	256
	All Things Censored: The Poem NPR Doesn't Want You to Hear	270
	Prisoner AM-8335: A Postscript	277
	Sarajevo I	283
	Emergence	299
	Ah, Wilderness! Humans, Hawks, and Environmental Correctness on the Muddy Rio Grande	307
	Maps	319
	Murder	327
	Going Back to Bisbee	331
	Flying in the Middle of Art	357
	Contributors	368
	Index	374