This innovative book teaches students how to write informative and engaging nonfiction that emphasizes voice and creativity and incorporates observation, research, memory, and point of view. Writing True serves as a valuable core textbook or a supplement for any creative writing or composition course with an emphasis on creative nonfiction.
A solid pedagogical approach shows students how to be true to capturing the real world with integrity and creativity. The first part of the book, "Writing Creative Nonfiction," offers ten chapters of practical guidance, skill-building exercises, and ideas to help writers develop their creativity. The second part of the book, "Reading Creative Nonfiction," contains an anthology divided into Memoir, Personal Essay, Portrait, Essay of Place, and Literary Journalism. Selections include works by Nora Ephron, Tracy Kidder, Eric Liu, David Sedaris, and other well-known masters of the creative nonfiction genre. The anthology also includes a section entitled "Stories of Craft," with four prominent writers, including John Irving and Sue Miller, describing the challenges and rewards of writing creative nonfiction.
- Chapters in the first part of the book can be used in different sequences along with the reading anthology, depending on the course. Class testers have used this book in a wide variety of classes.
- The exercises in the unique Ways In feature conclude each chapter of Part I, "Writing Creative Nonfiction," and give students ways to test what they are learning and practice chapter ideas and strategies.
- The authors emphasize the use of a journal or daybook as a key tool for creative nonfiction writers who discover their themes by writing first and figuring out why afterwards.
- The authors explain how to read a draft?one's own and others'?and how to give and receive feedback on works-in-progress.
- The glossary, "Twenty Ways to Talk About Creative Nonfiction," helps both new and experienced writers establish the common vocabulary essential in workshop settings.
- In their coverage on using visuals and combining genres, the authors provide guidance on how to incorporate humor and images as well as other genres such as collage and graphic memoir.
- The authors cover the difficult, controversial ethical questions involved in writing creative nonfiction, such as: "Where is the line between fact and fiction? What are the ethics of creative nonfiction? How can we best handle writing about people we know?"
Mimi Schwartz is a professor emerita in the writing program at Richard Stockton University. She is the award-winning author of When History is Personal (Nebraska, 2018), Good Neighbors, Bad Times: Echoes of My Father's German Village (Nebraska, 2008), and Thoughts from a Queen-Sized Bed (Nebraska, 2003) and is the coauthor of Writing True: The Art and Craft of Creative Non-Fiction. Her essays have been widely anthologized, and seven of them have been listed as Notables in the Best American Series.
