The Far Edges of the Fourth Genre: An Anthology of Explorations in Creative Nonfiction

Sean Prentiss

ISBN 10: 1611861217 / ISBN 13: 9781611861211

Published by Michigan State University Press, 2014

About this Item

Though creative nonfiction has been around since Montaigne, St. Augustine, and Seneca, weve only just begun to ask how this genre works, why it functions the way it does, and where its borders reside.

Seller Inventory # 00072678349

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Far Edges of the Fourth Genre: An Anthology of Explorations in Creative Nonfiction
• Publisher: Michigan State University Press
• Publication Date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1611861217
• ISBN 13: 9781611861211
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

Though creative nonfiction has been around since Montaigne, St. Augustine, and Seneca, we’ve only just begun to ask how this genre works, why it functions the way it does, and where its borders reside. But for each question we ask, another five or ten questions roil to the surface. And each of these questions, it seems, requires a more convoluted series of answers. What’s more, the questions students of creative nonfiction are drawn to during class discussions, the ones they argue the longest and loudest, are the same ideas debated by their professors in the hallways and at the corner bar. In this collection, sixteen essential contemporary creative nonfiction writers reflect on whatever far, dark edge of the genre they find themselves most drawn to. The result is this fascinating anthology that wonders at the historical and contemporary borderlands between fiction and nonfiction; the illusion of time on the page; the mythology of memory; poetry, process, and the use of received forms; the impact of technology on our writerly lives; immersive research and the power of witness; a chronology and collage; and what we write and why we write.

Contributors: Nancer Ballard, H. Lee Barnes, Kim Barnes, Mary Clearman Blew, Joy Castro, Robin Hemley, Judith Kitchen, Brenda Miller, Ander Monson, Dinty W. Moore, Sean Prentiss, Lia Purpura, Erik Reece, Jonathan Rovner, Bob Shacochis, and Joe Wilkins.

About the Author

Sean Prentiss has published essays, poems, short stories and magazine articles in number of national journals, and he is the creative editor for Backcountry Magazine. He is an assistant professor at Norwich University in Vermont.

Joe Wilkins is the author of a memoir, The Mountain and the Fathers, winner of the 2014 GLCA New Writers Award and a finalist for the 2013 Orion Book Award, and two collections of poems, Notes from the Journey Westward and Killing the Murnion Dogs. He lives with his his wife, son, and daughter in western Oregon, where he teaches writing at Linfield College.