Full Description
Ever since the term "creative nonfiction" first came into widespread use, memoirists and journalists, essayists and fiction writers have faced off over where the border between fact and fiction lies. This debate over ethics, however, has sidelined important questions of literary form. Bending Genre does not ask where the boundaries between genres should be drawn, but what happens when you push the line. Written for writers and students of creative writing, this collection brings together perspectives from today's leading writers of creative nonfiction, including Michael Martone, Brenda Miller, Ander Monson, and David Shields. Each writer's innovative essay probes our notions of genre and investigates how creative nonfiction is shaped, modeling the forms of writing being discussed. Like creative nonfiction itself, Bending Genre is an exciting hybrid that breaks new ground.
Contents
Introduction
I. Hybrids
David Lazar, "Queering the Essay"
Lia Purpura, "Why Some Hybrids Work and Others Don't"
Lawrence Sutin, "Don't Let Those Damn Genres Cross You Ever Again!"
Kazim Ali, "Genre-Queer"
Jenny Boully, "On the EEO Genre Sheet"
T. Fleischmann, "Ill-Fit the World"
Michael Martone, "Hermes Goes to College"
Karen Brennan, "Headiness"
Mary Cappello, "Propositions; Provocations: Inventions"
II. Structures
Margot Singer, "On Scaffolding, Hermit Crabs, and the Real False
Document"
Ander Monson, "Text Adventure"
Kevin Haworth, "Adventures in the Reference Section"
Barrie Jean Borich, "Autogeographies"
Brenda Miller, "'Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!': Courage and Creative Nonfiction"
David McGlynn, "Traumatized Time"
Lee Martin, "Split Tone"
Nicole Walker, "My Mistake"
Wayne Koestenbaum, "Play-Doh Fun Factory Poetics"
III. Unconventions
Margot Singer, "On Convention"
David Shields, "42 Tattoos"
David Madden, "Creative Exposition: Another Way that Nonfiction Writing Can Be Good"
Michael Martone, "Ostrakons at Amphipolis, Postcards from Chicago: Thucydides and the Invention and Deployment of Lyric History"
Steven Fellner, "On Fragmentation"
Dinty Moore, "Positively Negative"
Robin Hemley, "Study Questions for the Essay at Hand: A Speculative Essay"
Eula Biss, "It Is What It Is"
Nicole Walker, "The Inclusiveness of Metaphor"
Bibliography
Contributors
