Current Issue / Issue 77 Spring 2022
In this issue, we consider the challenges of living through collective (and too often unacknowledged) grief. How do we keep going in a time of tremendous sorrow? How do we put our experiences to good use? And how do we make room for joy and hope and laughter?
Featuring new essays about empathy training for medical students, the smell of fear in wartime, the explosive force of steam, the language of dishonesty, the tenacity of the house moth, and the necessary folly of renovating a home in fire season. Plus, advice and inspiration on staying motivated, writing about trauma, and finding creativity during a pandemic.
Including essays by
Explore Issue 77Recent Essays
The State Fair
Four teenage girls lived at the group home where I worked in my twenties. They went to public school, made friends, and sometimes did typical teenage things like go to prom or try out for the tennis team.Serving
There were warnings. There were no warnings. Slipping into my black boots and olive flight suit, braiding my hair, pressing my name tag on my breast, zipping my B-4 bag, kissing Cowboy goodbye, I was leaving.50 Years of Making Nonfiction Creative
How all the different flavors of nonfiction transformed into a literary art
Explore Creative Nonfiction
Can’t get enough? Browse 25 years of archives.
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CNF Education
Writing can be lonely. Often, what we need most as writers is a network of focused peers and professionals who can provide constructive feedback, keep us motivated, and inspire us to do our best work. You don’t have to write alone.
From online classes to webinars, all year round, CNF offers a variety of ways you can connect with the broader creative nonfiction community and learn new skills, generate new writing, stay focused, and create your best work.
About the Genre
What is Creative Nonfiction?
Dive in with CNF Founder and Editor, Lee Gutkind
Creative Nonfiction magazine defines the genre simply, succinctly, and accurately as “true stories well told.” And that, in essence, is what creative nonfiction is all about.
In some ways, creative nonfiction is like jazz—it’s a rich mix of flavors, ideas, and techniques, some newly invented and others as old as writing itself.
How to Reintegrate
A step-by-step guide to returning from war, utterly changed
Not Your Ordinary Experience of Desire
A poignant postmortem of a four-year relationship, told in alternating voices, becomes a catalog of unmet needs and wants … and a path to a hopeful future.
In Case You Missed It
#024 Pride & joy.
True Story
Each pocket-size issue our monthly mini-magazine showcases one exceptional longform essay by one exceptional writer.
