Creative Nonfiction explores Pittsburgh in Words with seven original essays

"Writing about Pittsburgh" is a fraught enterprise. You either get tangled in clichés—don't make me repeat them—or spend half your time denying the clichés have snared you.

So what's surprising about Pittsburgh in Words, the 250^th-birthday offering to the city from the locally based Creative Nonfiction Foundation, is that some of its most successful essays do accept the challenge of defining the place. […]

The collection's strongest work engages very particular subject matter as a way to explore larger issues including—but not limited to—what Pittsburgh's all about. Probably not by coincidence, this also tends to be the work that gives the best sense of a writer venturing, if not out of his or her comfort zone, at least into a wider world beyond family and friends. – Bill O'Driscoll