In Fact
The Best of Creative Nonfiction
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.
Reviews
*Starred Review* Mark Bowden, of Black Hawk Down (1999) fame, writes, “I think creative nonfiction is the major literary innovation of the last half century,” a claim with which Gutkind, a tireless advocate for the form, wholeheartedly agrees. So committed to the genre is writer, teacher, and editor Gutkind, he founded the literary journal Creative Nonfiction and now celebrates its phenomenal first decade by collecting 25 of its best essays. The result is an electrifying anthology that covers the creative nonfiction universe from the personal essay to nature writing, literary journalism, and science writing. Each superb piece is followed by a writer’s statement, and the book itself is introduced by a master of the form, Annie Dillard, whose “Notes for Young Writers” will galvanize all readers no matter their age or writing experience. Graced with memorable essays by such diverse writers as Diane Ackerman, Phillip Lopate, John McPhee, Richard Rodriguez, Floyd Skloot, John Edgar Wideman, and Terry Tempest Williams–writers who contemplate everything from creativity to race, the birth of a child, childhood memories, brain damage, and prairie dogs–this stellar volume will stand as an exciting and defining creative nonfiction primer. Donna Seaman
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—Booklist
