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Creative Nonfiction: Researching and Crafting Stories of Real Life, Revised Edition

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In this practical guidebook, Philip Gerard, author and founder of the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s MFA program in creative writing, walks through the genre of creative nonfiction—how it came to be defined and what it takes to craft a compelling, true story. Gerard combines journalistic skills with the art of storytelling in the eleven chapters covering subjects such as research, interviewing, mystery and structure, law and ethics, and revision. Writers will learn the challenges and steps to mastering the craft of creative nonfiction with Gerard’s generous instruction and advice. “The hardest part of writing creative nonfiction is that you’re stuck with what really happened—you can’t make it up,” writes Gerard. “You can be as artful as you want in the presentation, draw profound meanings out of your subject matter, but you are stuck with real people and real events. You’re stuck with stories that don’t always turn out the way you wish they had turned out.”  

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Philip Gerard

For Writers

The art of creative research:, a field guide for writers.

All writers conduct research. For some this means poring over records and combing, archives but for many creative writers research happens in the everyday world—when they scribble an observation on the subway, when they travel to get the feel for a city, or when they strike up a conversation with an interesting stranger.

The Art of Creative Research  helps writers take this natural inclination to explore and observe and turn it into a workable—and enjoyable—research plan. It shows that research shouldn’t be seen as a dry, plodding aspect of writing. Instead, it’s an art that all writers can master, one that unearths surprises and fuels imagination. This lends authenticity to fiction and poetry as well as nonfiction.

Creative Nonfiction:  Researching and Crafting Stories of Real Life

Second Edition, 2018

Writing creative nonfiction intertwines journalistic truth and literary techniques to tell a story that is clear, accurate, and exploding with meaning. Philip Gerard artfully guides readers through the entire creative nonfiction writing process, going beyond the technical basics to address topics such as ethics, voice, and structural integrity. In response to the genre’s evolution, the latest edition includes examples to illustrate how cultural changes have influenced the way writers conduct research, approach writing, and communicate during the production of their projects. Timely, engaging, and poetic,  Creative Nonfiction  is the practical manual every novice and seasoned writer will want on their bookshelf.

Writing Creative Nonfiction

Writing Creative Nonfiction presents more than thirty essays examining every key element of the craft, from researching ideas and structuring the story, to reportage and personal reflection. You'll learn from some of today's top creative nonfiction writers.

​ Through insightful prompts and exercises, these contributors help make the challenge of writing creative nonfiction–whether biography, true-life adventure, memoir, or narrative history–a welcome, rewarding endeavor. You'll also find an exciting, creative nonfiction "reader" comprising the final third of the book, featuring pieces from Barry Lopez, Annie Dillard, Beverly Lowry, Phillip Lopate, and more–selections so extraordinary, they will teach, delight, inspire, and entertain you for years to come!

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Creative nonfiction : researching and crafting stories of real life

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Uploaded by station07.cebu on October 15, 2021

Creative Nonfiction: Researching and Crafting Stories of Real Life

• Author(s) Philip Gerard
• Publisher Waveland Press

Print ISBN 9781577663393, 157766339X

Etext isbn 9781478602231, 1478602236.

• Available from $ 6.99 USD SKU: 9781478602231R90

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Creative Nonfiction: Researching and Crafting Stories of Real Life is written by Philip Gerard and published by Waveland Press. The Digital and eTextbook ISBNs for Creative Nonfiction: Researching and Crafting Stories of Real Life are 9781478602231, 1478602236 and the print ISBNs are 9781577663393, 157766339X. Save up to 80% versus print by going digital with VitalSource. Additional ISBNs for this eTextbook include 9781478600855.

Contributor

Philip Gerard

Philip Gerard holds an MFA from the University of Arizona. He is the author of three novels and four books of creative nonfiction, including Creative Nonfiction — Researching and Crafting Stories of Real Life , and he teaches in the Creative Writing Department at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington.

www.philipgerard.com

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Creative Nonfiction: Researching and Crafting Stories of Real Life Revised Edition

• ISBN-10 157766339X
• ISBN-13 978-1577663393
• Edition Revised
• Publisher Waveland Pr Inc
• Publication date February 1, 2004
• Language English
• Dimensions 6.25 x 0.75 x 9.25 inches
• Print length 224 pages
• See all details

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From the publisher, product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Waveland Pr Inc; Revised edition (February 1, 2004)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 224 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 157766339X
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1577663393
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 7 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.25 x 0.75 x 9.25 inches
• #1,801 in Words, Language & Grammar Reference
• #4,361 in Writing Skill Reference (Books)
• #12,534 in Professional

About the author

Philip gerard.

"I believe in the writer as a witness to evil, as a reporter of injustice, as a chronicler of human compassion, even on occasion of greatness, as one whose skills illuminate the Truth with a capital T, without irony. I believe it is the job of the writer to put into words what is worst - and also what is best - about us. To light up our possibilities, discover the finest lives to which we can aspire, and to inspire our readers to greatness of soul and heart."

The Patron Saint of Dreams book trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsvexuZ8Q7

________________________________________

Pocket Biography

Philip Gerard was born in 1955 and grew up in Newark, Delaware. He attended St. Andrew's School in Middletown, Delaware. At the University of Delaware, he earned a B.A. in English and Anthropology, graduating Phi Beta Kappa. After college he lived in Burlington, Vermont, writing freelance articles, before returning to newspaper work in Delaware and then going west to study fiction writing at the University of Arizona writers workshop. He earned his M.F.A. in Creative Writing in 1981 and almost immediately joined the faculty at Arizona State University as a Visiting Assistant Professor and later as Writer in Residence. He remained at ASU until 1986, then taught for a brief time at Lake Forest College in Illinois before migrating to coastal North Carolina.

Gerard has published fiction and nonfiction in numerous magazines, including New England Review/Bread Loaf Quarterly, Creative Nonfiction, Hawai'i Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, New Letters, Arts & Letters, Fourth Genre, and The World & I. He is the author of three novels: Hatteras Light (Scribners 1986; Blair/ Salem paper 1997, nominated for the Ernest Hemingway Prize), Cape Fear Rising (Blair 1994), Desert Kill (William Morrow 1994; Piatkus in U.K. 1994); and four books of nonfiction, including Brilliant Passage. . . a schooning memoir (Mystic 1989) and Creative Nonfiction-- Researching and Crafting Stories of Real Life (Story Press 1996), which was a selection of the Book-of-the-Month and Quality Paperback Book Clubs. Maryanne Culpepper, director of story development for National Geographic Television, writes, "It is the manual for nonfiction storytellers. . . Creative Nonfiction is on every bookcase at National Geographic Television."

He has written nine half-hour shows for Globe Watch, an international affairs program, for PBS-affiliate WUNC-TV, Chapel Hill, N.C. , and international broadcast, and scripted two hour-long environmental documentaries, one of which, "RiverRun- down the Cape Fear to the Sea," won a Silver Reel of Merit from the International Television Association in 1994. Two of his weekly radio essays have been broadcast on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered."

Gerard's Writing a Book that Makes a Difference (Story Press, 2000), combines his dual passions of writing and teaching. His latest book of nonfiction Secret Soldiers (Dutton 2002; Plume softcover 2004) tells the story of an unlikely band of heroes in World War II: artists who fought the Nazis by creating elaborate scenarios of deception, conjuring phantom armored divisions out of sound effects, radio scripts, pyrotechnics, and inflatable tanks. River Run: Adventuring Through History,Nature, and Politics Down the Cape Fear to the Sea is forthcoming from UNC Press.

He teaches in the BFA and MFA Programs of the Creative Writing Department at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, which he chairs. He has won the Faculty Scholarship Award, the College of Arts & Science Teaching Award, the Chancellor's Medal for Excellence in Teaching, the Graduate Mentor Award, the Board of Trustees Teaching Award, and a Distinguished Teaching Professorship, and the Faculty Excellence Award given by the MFA students. The Philip Gerard Fellowship, endowed by benefactor Charles F. Green III to honor Gerard's work in establishing and directing the MFA program, is awarded annually to an MFA student on the basis of literary merit. Gerard has also been writer in residence at Bradford (MA) College and Old Dominion University (VA), has taught at the Sand Hills and Bread Loaf Writers Conferences, and has conducted workshops at the Chautauqua Institution , the Wildacres Summer Writers Retreat, and the Goucher College summer residency MFA program in Creative Nonfiction.

In keeping with his conviction that writers should give something back to their profession, he has served on the Board of Trustees of the North Carolina Writers Network and from 1995-98 on the Board of Directors of the Associated Writing Programs, for two of those years as President. He has been appointed by Governor Bev Perdue to a second three-year term on the North Carolina Arts Council.

Look for his new book of narrative essays, The Patron Saint of Dreams, from Hub City Press in Spring 2012.

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