GLS 592: The Art of Creative Nonfiction
Instructor: Kimberly Faxon (faxonk AT uncw DOT edu)
“The essence of nonfiction writing is to make a bow of respect toward the material, not to condescend—to make a proper inquiry, to have patience, to spend a long time, to allow yourself to be tutored as well as you can, not to project, to try to hear. And after that bow of respect toward the material, you turn to make a bow of respect toward the reader, which is to say that you owe the reader as a member of your community clarity and coherence, a certain elegance of language as well as you can manage that.” Barry Lopez
There was time when writing nonfiction meant presenting one's subject to the reader as though the writer was never there, watching, observing, eating a sandwich, thinking and feeling and interacting with what was ultimately written. There was a time when nonfiction writers had to pretend that the arrangers never arranged, that their stories simply walked onto the page, unmediated, purely "objective." Thankfully, this is no longer the case.
The last two decades have witnessed a surge in works of creative nonfiction in both popular magazines and books. These works are part of an exciting and often controversial, "fourth genre" that draws its influences from such sources as narrative fiction, poetry, essays, journalism, and memoir. The birth of this genre indicates that readers everywhere want to know "the truth," and they want to hear it from people like you, and like me, who not only have some first-hand knowledge of our topics, but who are talented enough (or will be, after taking this course) in the literary arts to write with style and grace and all the technical finesse one expects to find in a beautifully-crafted poem or short story.
In this course we will both read and discuss a number of works of creative nonfiction and try our hands at writing in this genre. We will split our time between workshops of student writing and the discussion of published texts. As we read with a writer’s attention to style and technique, we will endeavor to ask questions that are essential to crafting real-life material: How does the narrator interact with, shape, and transform the material presented? Is the narrator the subject, the witness, or a detached observer? How does the author’s personal experience open a window into the larger world? How much do we trust the narrator and why do we care? How do we decide what to put in and what to leave out? What do we consider risky either personally or technically? How is memory constructed on the page and how does forgetting fit in? What’s the difference between invention and lying? What responsibility do we have to history and place? How does solid research and interviewing contribute to nonfiction narratives? How do our expectations as readers change when we’re told something is nonfiction? How do our obligations as writers change?
Texts:
Our reading list will be diverse in subject and form, and may include the following:
Frank Conroy, Stop-Time
John D’Agata, The Next American Essay
Edwidge Danticat, Brother, I’m Dying
James Galvin, The Meadow
Elizabeth Gilbert, The Last American Man
A.M. Homes, The Mistress’s Daughter
Phillip Lopate, The Art of the Personal Essay
J.R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar
Susan Orlean, The Bullfighter Checks her Makeup
David Foster Wallace, A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again
Requirements:
Creative assignments will include regular short writing assignments and a work of creative nonfiction (20-30 pp). Other requirements will include: critical responses to published works and critiques for all workshopped material (1-2 pp).
Last Update: November 12, 2008
