The Best Creative Nonfiction, Volume 3
Anyone still asking, “What is creative nonfiction?” will find the answer in this collection of artfully crafted, true stories. Selected by Lee Gutkind and the staff of Creative Nonfiction, these stories—ranging from immersion journalism to intensely personal essays—illustrate the genre’s power and potential.
Edwidge Danticat recalls her Uncle Moïse’s love of a certain four-letter word and finds in his abandonment of the word near the end of his life the true meaning of exile. In Literary Murder, Julianna Baggott traces her roots as a novelist to her family’s “strange, desperate (sometimes conniving and glorious) past” and writes about her decision, in The Madam, to kill off a character based on her grandfather. And Sean Rowe explains why, if you must get arrested, Selma, Alabama, is the place to do it.
This exciting and expansive array of works and voices is sure to impress and delight.
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Table of Contents
Introduction: Agent of Change
As I write this in December 2008, change is everywhere.“Change” was the mantra of the recent presidential election, of course, the promise on which Barack Obama and Joe Biden based their campaign—and on which the McCain-Palin ticket opposed Obama.An Insider’s Guide to Jailhouse Cuisine: Dining In
I've been making my living as a writer since I was seventeen and now I'm forty-five. In that time I've never received so much response to a story as I have to this one. I'm not sure why that is.Literary Murder
I can't imagine handing over this very personal confession to fiction.Rock Dust
Show, Don’t Tell
The Rope Swing, the Swastika, the Oldest Whale I Know
Table of Figures
Okahandja Lessons
No Other Joy
First Year
On writing “First Year”by Laura Bramon Good. Finding blood on our basement apartment walls was like receiving solemn instruction to keep searching for meaning in the heartbreaking stories—our own and others—that haunted my husband Ben and me during our first year of marriage.Letter from a Japanese Crematorium
On writing “Letter from a Japanese Crematorium”by Marie Mutsuki Mockett. Revealing something very personal without the filter of fiction was initially difficult for me. When I turned in an early draft of this essay, my agent asked for a rewrite.Uncle Moïse
The Face of Seung-Hui Cho
The Poet’s Mother’s Deathbed Conversion
The Storyteller
Lavish Dwarf Entertainment
Chicago Transit Priority
Grasshopper
On writing “Grasshopper”by Margaret Conway. I write nonfiction because I have no other choice. The characters who clamor inside my head refuse to be fictionalized or tethered to a conventional plot. My mother once said, “You’re a writer?What Comes Out
(names have been changed)
Community College
On writing “Community College” by Tim Bascom. Creative nonfiction swerves toward introspection. I’m glad this essay focuses outward instead. It’s still a bit of a surprise, since I am inclined the other way.Cantata 147: The Final Chorale
On writing “Cantata 147: The Final Chorale”by Amy Andrews. The beds in my granny’s Kentucky farmhouse were covered with “old work quilts” my great-grandmother hand pieced from scraps. The “nice” quilts, patterned, like the Double Wedding Rings, were displayd on a quilt rack in the corner.I Can’t Answer
An Open Letter
A Perfunctory Affair
Return to Hayneville
I’m drawn to the mystery of what it is to be a self and how to dramatize that in language. Usually, I write lyric poetry. That is to say, I dramatize heightened states of consciousness in highly-patterned language and with a minimum of action and character development.
Additional information
Weight | 4 lbs |
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Dimensions | 9 × 6 × 0.75 in |