literary nonfiction essay examples

• Craft and Criticism
• Fiction and Poetry
• News and Culture
• Lit Hub Radio
• Reading Lists

• Literary Criticism
• Craft and Advice
• In Conversation
• On Translation
• Short Story
• From the Novel
• Bookstores and Libraries
• Film and TV
• Art and Photography
• Freeman’s
• The Virtual Book Channel
• Behind the Mic
• Beyond the Page
• The Cosmic Library
• The Critic and Her Publics
• Emergence Magazine
• Fiction/Non/Fiction
• First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing
• The History of Literature
• I’m a Writer But
• Lit Century
• The Lit Hub Podcast
• Tor Presents: Voyage Into Genre
• Windham-Campbell Prizes Podcast
• Write-minded
• The Best of the Decade
• Best Reviewed Books
• BookMarks Daily Giveaway
• The Daily Thrill
• CrimeReads Daily Giveaway

The 20 Best Works of Nonfiction of the Decade

In which we cheated..

Friends, it’s true: the end of the decade approaches. It’s been a difficult, anxiety-provoking, morally compromised decade, but at least it’s been populated by some damn fine literature. We’ll take our silver linings where we can.

So, as is our hallowed duty as a literary and culture website—though with full awareness of the potentially fruitless and endlessly contestable nature of the task—in the coming weeks, we’ll be taking a look at the best and most important (these being not always the same) books of the decade that was. We will do this, of course, by means of a variety of lists. We began with the best debut novels , the best short story collections , the best poetry collections , the best memoirs of the decade , and the best essay collections of the decade. But our sixth list was a little harder—we were looking at what we (perhaps foolishly) deemed “general” nonfiction: all the nonfiction excepting memoirs and essays (these being covered in their own lists) published in English between 2010 and 2019.

Reader, we cheated. We picked a top 20. It only made sense, with such a large field. And 20 isn’t even enough, really. But so it goes, in the world of lists.

The following books were finally chosen after much debate (and multiple meetings) by the Literary Hub staff. Tears were spilled, feelings were hurt, books were re-read. And as you’ll shortly see, we had a hard time choosing just ten—so we’ve also included a list of dissenting opinions, and an even longer list of also-rans. As ever, free to add any of your own favorites that we’ve missed in the comments below.

The Top Twenty

Michelle alexander, the new jim crow (2010).

I read Michelle Alexander’s  The New Jim Crow  when it first came out, and I remember its colossal impact so clearly—not just on the academic world (it is, technically, an academic book, and Alexander is an academic) but everywhere. It was published during the Obama Administration, an interval which many (white people) thought signaled a new dawn of race relations in America—of a kind of fantastic post-racialism. Though it’s hard to look back on this particular zeitgeist now (when, and I still can’t believe I’m writing this, Donald Trump is president of the United States) without decrying the ignorance and naiveté of this mindset, Alexander’s book called out this the insistence on a phenomenon of “colorblindness” in 2012, as a veneer, as a sham, or as, simply, another form of ignorance. “We have not ended racial caste in America,” she declares, “we have merely redesigned it.” Alexander’s meticulous research concerns the mass incarceration of black men principally through the War on Drugs, Alexander explains how the United States government itself (the justice system) carries out a significant racist pattern of injustice—which not only literally subordinates black men by jailing them, but also then removes them of their rights and turns them into second class citizens after the fact. Former convicts, she learns through working with the ACLU, will face discrimination (discrimination that is supported and justified by society) which includes restrictions from voting rights, juries, food stamps, public housing, student loans—and job opportunities. “Unlike in Jim Crow days, there were no ‘Whites Only’ signs.” Alexander explains. “This system is out of sight, out of mind.” Her book, which exposes this subtler but still horrible new mode of social control, is an essential, groundbreaking achievement which does more than call out the hypocrisy of our infrastructure, but provide it with obvious steps to change.  –Olivia Rutigliano, CrimeReads Editorial Fellow

Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies (2010)

In this riveting (despite its near 600 pages) and highly influential book, Mukherjee traces the known history of our most feared ailment, from its earliest appearances over five thousand years ago to the wars still being waged by contemporary doctors, and all the confusion, success stories, and failures in between—hence the subtitle “a biography of cancer,” though of course it is also a biography of humanity and of human ingenuity (and lack thereof).

Mukherjee began to write the book after a striking interaction with a patient who had stomach cancer, he told The New York Times . “She said, ‘I’m willing to go on fighting, but I need to know what it is that I’m battling.’ It was an embarrassing moment. I couldn’t answer her, and I couldn’t point her to a book that would. Answering her question—that was the urgency that drove me, really. The book was written because it wasn’t there.”

His work was certainly appreciated. The Emperor of All Maladies won the 2011 Pulitzer in General Nonfiction (the jury called it “An elegant inquiry, at once clinical and personal, into the long history of an insidious disease that, despite treatment breakthroughs, still bedevils medical science.”), the Guardian first book award, and the inaugural PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award; it was a New York Times bestseller. But most importantly, it was the first book many laypeople (read: not scientists, doctors, or those whose lives had already been acutely affected by cancer) had read about the most dreaded of all diseases, and though the science marches on, it is still widely read and referenced today.  –Emily Temple, Senior Editor

Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2010)

As a strongly humanities-focused person, it’s difficult for me to connect with books about science. What can I say besides that public education and I failed each other. When I read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks , I found myself thinking that if all scientific knowledge were part of this kind of incredibly compelling and human narrative, I would probably be a doctor by now. (I mean, it’s possible .) Rebecca Skloot tells the story of Henrietta Lacks, a black woman who died of cervical cancer in 1951, and her cells (dubbed HeLa cells) which were cultured without her permission, and which were the first human cells to reproduce in a lab—making them immensely valuable to scientists in research labs all over the world. HeLa cells have been used for the development of vaccines and treatments as well as in drug treatments, gene mapping, and many, many other scientific pursuits. They were even sent to space so scientists could study the effects of zero gravity on human cells.

Skloot set a wildly ambitious project for herself with this book. Not only does she write about the (immortal) life of the cells as well as the lives of Lacks and her (human, not just cellular) descendants, she also writes about the racism in the medical field and medical ethics as a whole. That the book feels cohesive as well as compelling is a great testament to Skloot’s skills as a writer. “ Immortal Life  reads like a novel,” writes Eric Roston in his Washington Post review . “The prose is unadorned, crisp and transparent.” For a book that encompasses so much, it never feels baggy. Nearly ten years later, it remains an urgent text, and one that is taught in high schools, universities, and medical schools across the country. It is both an incredible achievement and, simply, a really good read.  –Jessie Gaynor, Social Media Editor

Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands (2010)

Timothy Snyder’s brilliant Bloodlands has changed World War II scholarship more, perhaps, than any work since Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem, an apt comparison given that Bloodlands includes within it a response to Arendt’s theory of the banality of evil (Snyder doesn’t buy it, and provides convincing proof that Eichmann was more of a run-of-the-mill hateful Nazi and less a colorless bureaucrat simply doing his job). Snyder reads in 10 languages, which is key to his ability to synthesize international scholarship and present new theories in an accessible way. But before I continue praising this book, I should probably let y’all know what it’s about— Bloodlands is a history of mass killings in the Double-Occupied Zone of Eastern Europe, where the Soviets showed up, killed everyone they wanted to, and then the Nazis showed up and killed everyone else. By focusing on mass killings, rather than genocide, Snyder is able to draw connections between totalitarian regimes and examine the mechanisms by which small nations can suddenly and horrifyingly become much smaller.  –Molly Odintz, CrimeReads Associate Editor

Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010)

Wilkerson’s history of the Great Migration is a revelation. When we talk about migration in the context of American history, we tend to focus on triumphalist stories of immigrants coming to America, but what about the vast migrations that have happened internally? Between 1920 and 1970, millions of African-Americans migrated North from the prejudice-ridden South, lured by relatively high-paying jobs and relatively less racism. It takes a whole lot to make someone leave their home, and Wilkerson does an excellent job at reminding us how awful life in the South was for Black people (and still is, in many ways). The Warmth of Other Suns is not only fascinating—it’s also thrilling, taking us into the lives of hard-scrabble folk who were equal parts refugees and adventurers, and truly epic, telling a great story on a grand scale. Don’t think that means there aren’t small moments of humanity seeded throughout the book—for every sentence about the conduct of millions, there’s a detail that reminds us that we’re reading about individuals, with their own hopes, wishes, dreams, and struggles.  –Molly Odintz, CrimeReads Associate Editor

Robert A. Caro, The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson (2012)

While Robert Caro first came to prominence for The Powerbroker, his 1974 biography of divisive urban planner Robert Moses, it’s Caro’s ongoing multi-volume biography of LBJ, America’s most unjustly maligned president (fight me, Kennedy-heads!), that has cemented his legacy. It’s hard to pick one in particular to recommend, but The Passage of Power, which covers the years 1958-1964, captures the most tumultuous period of LBJ’s life in politics, as he went from feared senator, to side-lined VP, to suddenly becoming the post powerful figure in the world. There’s something profoundly moving about the vastness of these works—Caro is 83 now, and has dedicated an enormous part of his life to this singular project. His wife is his only approved research assistant, and together, they’ve upended half a century of LBJ criticism to reveal the complex, problematic, but always striving core of a sensitive soul.

I had a teacher in high school who spent 20 years working on her dissertation on LBJ. She’d spend each weekend at the LBJ Library at UT Austin, while working full time as a public school teacher, and kicked ass at both. There’s something about LBJ that inspires people to dedicate their entire lives to trying to figure him out, and in the process, trying to understand the world that made him, and that he made. Thanks to Caro, we can all understand LBJ a little bit better.  –Molly Odintz, CrimeReads Associate Editor

Tom Reiss, The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo (2012)

Tom Reiss opens his biography of Thomas Alexandre-Dumas, father of author Alexandre Dumas, with a scene that seems right out of an academic heist film. At a library in rural France, Reiss convinces a town official to blow open a safe whose combination was held only by the late librarian. What Reiss discovers are the rudiments of a grand and, until then, largely unknown story of the man who inspired some of his son’s most beloved tales.  The Black Count  is also a case study of complex racial politics during the age of revolutionary France. Dumas was born in 1762 in Saint-Domingue, the French Caribbean colony that would become Haiti. As the son of a French marquis and a freed black slave, Dumas was subject both to the privileges of the former and the kind of indignities suffered by the latter. His father, for instance, sells him into slavery when he is 12 only to purchase his freedom later and bring him to France, where the young man receives an aristocratic education. A final rift from his father prompts Dumas to join the military. Reiss creates a dynamic, if somewhat speculative portrait of Dumas based on letters, reports from battlefields, Dumas’ own writings, and more. By the time he is 30, Dumas has vaulted in the ranks from corporal to general and commands a division of more than 50,000 soldiers. It’s no accident that the thrilling militaristic feats Reiss describes sound like events out of  The Count of Monte Cristo  or  The Three Musketeers . Though the general becomes a cavalry commander under Napoleon Bonaparte, Reiss suggests that it was Napoleon himself who ruined Dumas not only from a personal standpoint, but civilizational as well. Napoleon reintroduced slavery in Haiti, after all, in contradiction to the republican dreams of Dumas’ contemporary, Toussaint Louverture, another rare and successful 18th-century general of African descent. Reiss unearths the ultimately tragic story of a man who was infamous in his own time for enjoying social and professional advantages that would’ve been unheard of for a mixed-race man in the US, a nation which of course went through its own revolution one generation earlier.  –Aaron Robertson, Assistant Editor

Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction (2014)

The premise of Elizabeth Kolbert’s Pulitzer-prize-winning book is a simple scientific fact: there have been five mass extinctions in the history of the planet, and soon there will be six. The difference, Kolbert explains, is that this one is caused by humans, who have drastically altered the earth in a short time. She points out on the first page that humans (which is to say,  homo sapiens , humans like us) have only been around for two hundred thousand or so years—an incredibly short amount of time to do damage enough to destroy most of earthly life. Kolbert’s book is so unique, though, because she combines research from across disciplines (scientific and social-scientific) to prepare an extremely comprehensive, sweeping argument about how our oceans, air, animal populations, bacterial ecosystems, and other natural elements are dangerously adapting to (or dying from) human impact, while also tracing the history of both the approaches to these things (theories of evolution, extinction, and other principles). It’s a depressing and horrifying argument on the face of it, but it’s made so delicately, even poetically—Kolbert’s concerned, occasional first-person narration, and her many interviews with professionals capable of the pithiest, most perfect quotes (not to mention that she interviews these experts, sometimes, over pizza) make this book a conversation, more than a treatise. Kolbert talks us through the headiest, most complicated science, breaking down this mass disaster morsel by morsel. This might be  The Sixth Extinction’ s greatest achievement—it is so smart while also being so quotidian, so urgent while also being so present. And this fits the tone of her argument: our current mass extinction doesn’t feel like an asteroid hitting the planet. It’s amassed by the small ways in which we live our lives. We are crawling, she illuminates, towards the end of the world.  –Olivia Rutigliano, CrimeReads Editorial Fellow

Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me (2015)

Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me 1) won the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2015, 2) was a #1 New York Times bestseller, and 3) was deemed “required reading” by Toni Morrison. What else is there to say? To call it “timely” or “urgent” or even “a prime example of how the personal is, in fact, political” (as I am tempted to do) does not quite capture the unique, grounding, heartbreaking experience of reading this book. Framed as a letter to his teenage son, Between the World and Me is both a biting interrogation of American history and today’s society and an intimate look at the concerns and hopes a father passes down to his son. In just 152 pages, this book touches on the creation of race (“But race is the child of racism, not the father”), the countless acts of violence enacted on black bodies, gun control, and anecdotes from the writer’s own life. Ta-Nehisi Coates, a correspondent for The Atlantic , exercises a journalist’s concision and clarity and fuses it with the flourish of a novelist and the caring instinct of a father. It is a wonderful hybrid. The way the topics, the tones, bleed into one another reads so naturally: “I write you in your fifteenth year. I am writing you because this was the year you saw Eric Garner choked to death for selling cigarettes; because you know now that Renisha McBride was shot for seeking help, and that John Crawford was shot down for browsing in a department store…” The list, of course, goes on. Between the World and Me brilliantly forces us to confront these tragedies again—to remember our own experiences watching the news coverage, to see them in the context of history filtered through Ta-Nehisi Coates’ unsurprised perspective, and to see them anew through the eyes of his disillusioned young son. There is an amazing generosity to these personal glimpses, the moments when the writer turns to his son (says “you”). They catch you off guard. (There are even photographs throughout, like a scrapbook you aren’t sure if you’re allowed to look through.) There have been many books about race, about violence and institutionalized injustice and identity, and there will be more, but none quite so beautifully shattering as this. –Katie Yee, Book Marks Assistant Editor

Andrea Wulf, The Invention of Nature (2015)

Andrea Wulf’s 2015 biography of 18th-century German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt—one of the most famous men of his time, for whom literally hundreds of towns, rivers, currents, glaciers, and more are named—is so much more than the story of a single life. Aside from chronicling a remarkably fertile moment in the history of European ideas (Von Humboldt was good buddies with his neighbor in Weimar, Goethe) Wulf reveals in Humboldt a true forebear of present-day ecology, a jack-of-all-trades scientist less concerned with the reduction of the natural world into its constituent specimens than with our place in a broader ecosystem.

And while it doesn’t seem particularly radical now, Humboldt’s proto-environmentalist ideas about the wider world, much of which he mapped and explored, stood in stark contrast to prevailing notions of Christian dominion, that dubious theological position conjured up in aid of empire. Insofar as Humboldt was among the first to understand and articulate the complex systems of a living forest, he was also the first to sound the alarm about the impacts of deforestation (much of which he encountered on his epic journey across the northern reaches of South America). Part adventure yarn, part intellectual history, part ecological meditation, The Invention of Nature restores to prominence an exemplary life, and reminds us of the tectonic force of ideas paired to action.  –Jonny Diamond, Editor in Chief

Stacy Schiff, The Witches (2015)

It’s surprising that with a topic as popular and recurring in American culture as the Salem witch trials there have not been more books of this kind. Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the bestselling Cleopatra, Stacy Schiff takes to the Salem witch trials with curiosity and a historian’s magnifying glass, setting out to uncover the mystery that has baffled, awed, and terrified generations since. She pokes at the spectacle that Salem has become in mainstream and artistic depictions—how it has blended with folklore and fiction and has hitherto become a sensationalized event in American history which nonetheless has never been fully understood. Schiff writes that despite the imagination surrounding the Salem witch trials, in reality, there is still a gap in their history of—to be exact—nine months; so the impetus of the book and the intent of Schiff is to penetrate the mass hysteria and panic that ripped through Salem at the time and led to the execution of fourteen women and five men. In her opening chapter, Schiff chillingly sets up the atmosphere of the book and asks key questions that will drive its ensuing narrative: “Who was conspiring against you? Might you be a witch and not know it? Can an innocent person be guilty? Could anyone, wondered a group of men late in the summer, consider themselves safe?” At the heart of Schiff’s historical investigation is the Puritan culture of New England—but part of her masterful synthesis is that she picks apart at each thread of Salem’s culture and evaluates the witch trials from every perspective. Praised for her research as well as her prose and narrative capabilities, Schiff’s The Witches has been described by The Times (London) as “An oppressive, forensic, psychological thriller”; Schiff herself, by the New York Review of Books as having “mastered the entire history of early New England.” A phrase that still haunts me for its resonance throughout human history, is: “Even at the time, it was clear to some that Salem was a story of one thing behind which was a story about something else altogether.” –Eleni Theodoropoulos, Editorial Fellow

Svetlana Alexievich, tr. Bela Shayevich, Secondhand Time (2016)

A landmark work of oral history, Svetlana Alexievich’s Second-hand Time chronicles the decline and fall of Soviet communism and the rise of oligarchic capitalism. Through a multitude of interviews conducted between 1991 and 2012 with ordinary citizens—doctors, soldiers, waitresses, Communist party secretaries, and writers—Alexievich’s account is as important to understanding the Soviet world as Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago . Second-hand Time first appeared in Russia in 2013 and was translated into English in 2016 by Bella Shayevich. As David Remnick wrote in The New Yorker , “There are many worthwhile books on the post-Soviet period and Putin’s ascent…But the nonfiction volume that has done the most to deepen the emotional understanding of Russia during and after the collapse of the Soviet Union of late is Svetlana Alexievich’s oral history…” It is shockingly intimate, Alexievich’s interviewees sharing their darkest traumas and deepest regrets. In their kitchens, at gravesites, each character tells the story of a nation abandoned by the Kremlin. Like much of Alexievich’s work, it is radical in its composition, challenging with its polyphony of distinctive, human voices the “official history” of a society that presented itself as homogeneous and monolithic—an achievement the Nobel committee recognized when it cited the Belorussian journalist for developing “a new kind of literary genre…a history of the soul.” Like her more recent The Unwomanly Face of War and Last Witnesses: An Oral History of the Children of World War II , Alexievich’s project is one of the most important accounts being produced today.  –Emily Firetog, Deputy Editor

Jane Mayer, Dark Money (2016)

In addition to being an incredible work of reporting, Jane Mayer’s Dark Money is a historical document of what happened to America as a small group of plutocrats funded the rise of political candidates who espoused policies and beliefs that had been, until then, considered a part of the fringe right wing of the Republican Party. Mayer describes this group as “a small, rarefied group of hugely wealthy, archconservative families that for decades poured money, often with little public disclosure, into influencing how Americans thought and voted.” Mayer’s painstakingly reported work is a monumental achievement; she lays out, in as much detail as could possibly be available, the mechanisms that allowed this group to channel their wealth and power, with the help of federal law, to a set of institutions that aim to fight scientific advancement, justice-oriented movements, and climate change. In doing so, they have overhauled American politics. As Alan Ehrenhalt put it in a review of the book for The New York Times, she describes “a private political bank capable of bestowing unlimited amounts of money on favored candidates, and doing it with virtually no disclosure of its source.”

The stakes here extend beyond American politics; Mayer points out that Koch money upholds some of the institutions most vigorously fighting climate activism and defending the fossil fuel industry. In 2017, she told the Los Angeles Times , “There are many things you can fix and you can bring back, and there are sort of cycles in American history and the pendulum swings back and forth, but there are things you can damage irreparably, and that’s what I’m worried about right this moment … And that’s why this particular book—because it’s about the money that is stopping this country from doing something useful on climate change.”  –Corinne Segal, Senior Editor

David France, How to Survive a Plague (2016)

To call How to Survive a Plague extensive would be an understatement; France’s account of the epidemic’s earliest days is overwhelmingly generous, letting the reader experience those days, and everything that followed, from within the community that faced it first. France recounts the ways in which scientists and doctors first responded to the virus, tracing the evolution of that understanding from within a small circle to a broad cry for awareness and resources; meanwhile, he shows how a community of people fighting for their lives mobilized alternative systems of communication, education, and support while facing an almost inconceivable wall of barriers to that work. The importance of language in this fight is at the forefront here, from the scientific question of what to call the virus, to its reputation in popular culture as “gay cancer,” to the disagreements within activist groups about how to tell their stories to an unsympathetic world.

This is an enraging history, one of various institutional failures, missed opportunities, hypocrisies, and acts of malice toward a community in crisis, motivated by hatred and horror of queer people and gay men in particular. But I felt equally enraged and in awe. This is a humbling history to read, especially if, like me, you come from a generation of queer people that has been accused of forgetting it. I’m grateful for France’s testimony; it won’t let any of us forget.  –Corinne Segal, Senior Editor

Andrés Reséndez, The Other Slavery (2016)

Reséndez’s The Other Slavery is nothing short of an epic recalibration of American history, one that’s long overdue and badly needed in the present moment. The story of the assault on indigenous peoples in the Americas is perhaps well-known, but what’s less known is how many of those people were enslaved by colonizers, how that enslavement led to mass death, and how complicit the American legal system was in bringing that oppression about and sustaining it for years beyond the supposed emancipation in regions in which indigenous peoples were enslaved. This was not an isolated phenomenon. It extended from Caribbean plantations to Western mining interests. It was part and parcel of the European effort to settle the “new world” and was one of the driving motivations behind the earliest expeditions and colonies. Reséndez puts the number of indigenous enslaved between Columbus’s arrival and 1900 at somewhere between 2.5 and 5 million people. The institution took many forms, but reading through the legal obfuscation and drilling down into the archival record and first-hand accounts of the eras, Reséndez shows how slavery permeated the continents. Native tribes were not simply wiped out by disease, war, and brutal segregation. They were also worked—against their will, without pay, in mass numbers—to death. It was a sustained and organized enslavement. The Other Slavery also tells the story of uprising—communities that resisted, individuals who fought. It’s a complex and tragic story that required a skilled historian to bring into the contemporary consciousness. In addition to his skills as a historian and an investigator, Resendez is a skilled storyteller with a truly remarkable subject. This is historical nonfiction at its most important and most necessary.  –Dwyer Murphy, CrimeReads Managing Editor

Rebecca Traister, All the Single Ladies (2016)

One night, facing a brief gap between plans with different people, I took Rebecca Traister’s All the Single Ladies to a bar. A few minutes after I ordered, deep in Traister’s incredible, extensive history of single women in America, a server came over to offer me another, more isolated seat at the end of the bar, “so you don’t feel embarrassed about being alone,” she said, quietly. I assured her I was okay, trying not to laugh. She was just so worried.

I turned back to my book to find Traister describing this kind of cultural distress— a woman, alone, in public?! —at a new generation of unmarried adult women, who are more autonomous and numerous today than ever before. Far from marking a crisis in the social order, Traister writes, this shift “was in fact a new order … women’s paths were increasingly marked with options, off-ramps, variations on what had historically been a very constrained theme.” She examines the history of unmarried women as a social and political force, including the activists who devoted their lives to establishing a greater range of educational, familial, and economic choices for women, with particular attention to the ways in which that history is also one of racial and economic justice in the US. Traister also highlights the networks of social support that women have created in order to survive patriarchy and establish lifestyles that did not depend on it; intimacy and communication among unmarried women, she shows, were the backbone of activist and reform movements that successfully challenged the dominant order.

The book draws on interviews from dozens of women of varying backgrounds, and their firsthand accounts are a portrait of life amid a historic shift toward female autonomy. Their stories, and Traister’s analysis, make it clear that even as options for many women are expanding, those options are not equally available or beneficial to all women. This is a stunning reckoning with the state of women’s independence and the policies that still seek to curtail it.  –Corinne Segal, Senior Editor

Caroline Fraser, Prairie Fires (2017)

Prairie Fires , Caroline Fraser’s Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Critics Circle Award-winning biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder is not just a painstakingly researched and lyrically realized account of how the Little House on the Prairie author decanted the poverty and precarity of her homesteader family’s existence into narratives of self-reliance and perseverance—although it is that—it is also a meditation on the human need “to transform the raw materials of the past into art.” Full disclosure, I did not read the Little House on the Prairie books as a child and have no sentimental attachment to Laura, Pa or Ma. But in looking at the life behind the books, Wilder emerges as a tenacious, sometimes fragile figure, and as a literary operator of uncommon nous and self-awareness. Drawing on unpublished manuscripts, letters, diaries, and land and financial records, Prairie Fires has all the essentials of a great history book. Most importantly, Fraser’s great skill is in pulling back the veils of mythology that have enshrouded her subject and the era her works helped to define, enabling us to see both the real people and the myths themselves with fresh, critical eyes. There is no romanticizing of the Frontier, and a very real understanding of the sentimentality and bias of an overtly racist understanding of “westward expansion.” It is a remarkable book.   –Emily Firetog, Deputy Editor

David W. Blight, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom  (2018)

In 2017, monuments commemorating heroes of the Confederacy were being debated, defaced and toppled throughout the United States. That same year, months before President Trump signed a law creating a commission to plan for the bicentennial of Frederick Douglass’ birth, he infamously seemed to suggest that Douglass was still around, doing an “amazing job” and “getting recognized more and more.” The irony was hard to miss: it was easy to eulogize a past that was not comprehensively, nor even fundamentally understood. One achievement of historian David Blight’s monumental study of the former slave turned abolitionist is the thoroughness with which it examines the man’s development across three autobiographies he produced in the span of ten years. The popular image of Douglass has long been that of a bushy-haired man affixed to Abraham Lincoln’s side, delivering rousing speeches on abolition and the sins of slavery. And while there is basic truth to that, Blight sets out to fill the gaps in public understanding, guiding readers from the Maryland slave plantation where Douglass was born to the many stops along his European speech circuit, when he established himself as one of the world’s most recognizable opponents of slavery. The vague circumstances of Douglass’ birth (he was born to an enslaved woman and a white man who may also have been his owner) later compelled him to create his own life narratives, a task that he accomplished both in writing and oratory. Blight’s engagement with Douglass’ writing also marks the biography as a triumph of public-facing textual criticism. For decades before  Prophet of Freedom  astonished critics and general readers, Blight had been making his name as one of the leading Douglass scholars in the US. Blight’s work was not historical revisionism, but rather a considered analysis of a man who relied on actions as much as words. Many may be surprised to learn, for example, what a vocal supporter Douglass was of the Civil War and violence as a necessary means to dismantle the system that had nearly destroyed him. Prophet of Freedom  feels as definitive as a Robert Fagles translation of Homer—we hope it’s not the final word, though it will take quite the successor to produce a worthwhile follow-up.  –Aaron Robertson, Assistant Editor

Robert Macfarlane, Underland (2019)

One hesitates to label any book by a living writer his “magnum opus” but Macfarlane’s Underland —a deeply ambitious work that somehow exceeds the boundaries it sets for itself—reads as offertory and elegy both, finding wonder in the world even as we mourn its destruction by our own hand. If you’re unfamiliar with its project, as the name would suggest, Underland is an exploration of the world beneath our feet, from the legendary catacombs of Paris to the ancient caveways of Somerset, from the hyperborean coasts of far Norway to the mephitic karst of the Slovenian-Italian borderlands.

Macfarlane has always been a generous guide in his wanderings, the glint of his erudition softened as if through the welcoming haze of a fireside yarn down the pub. Even as he considers all we have wrought upon the earth, squeezing himself into the darker chambers of human creation—our mass graves, our toxic tombs—Macfarlane never succumbs to pessimism, finding instead in the contemplation of deep time a path to humility. This is an epochal work, as deep and resonant as its subject matter, and would represent for any writer the achievement of a lifetime.  –Jonny Diamond, Editor in Chief

Patrick Radden Keefe, Say Nothing: A True History of Memory and Murder in Northern Ireland (2019)

Attempting, in a single volume, to cover the scale and complexity of the Northern Ireland Troubles—a bloody and protracted political and ethno-nationalist conflict that came to dominate Anglo-Irish relations for over three decades—while also conveying a sense of the tortured humanity and mercurial motivations of some of its most influential and emblematic individual players  and  investigating one of the most notorious unsolved atrocities of the period, is, well, a herculean task that most writers would never consider attempting. Thankfully, investigative journalist Patrick Radden Keefe (whose 2015  New Yorker  article on Gerry Adams,  “Where the Bodies Are Buried”,  is a searing precursor to  Say Nothing ) is not most writers. His mesmerizing account, both panoramically sweeping and achingly intimate, uses the disappearance and murder of widowed mother of ten Jean McConville in Belfast in 1972 as a fulcrum, around which the labyrinthine wider narrative of the Troubles can turn. The book, while meticulously researched and reported (Radden Keefe interviewed over one hundred different sources, painstakingly sorting through conflicting and corroborating accounts), also employs a novelistic structure and flair that in less skilled hands could feel exploitative, but here serves only to deepen our understanding of both the historical events and the complex personalities of ultimately tragic figures like Dolours Price, Brendan Hughes, and McConville herself—players in an attritional drama who have all too often been reduced to the status of monster or martyr. Once you’ve caught your breath, what you’ll be left with by the close of this revelatory hybrid work is a deep and abiding feeling of sorrow, which is exactly as it should be.   –Dan Sheehan, BookMarks Editor

Dissenting Opinions

The following books were just barely nudged out of the top ten, but we (or at least one of us) couldn’t let them pass without comment.

Maggie Nelson, The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning (2011)

Maggie Nelson, if evaluated from a first glance at her authored works, may appear to be a paradox. That the author of Bluets, a moving lyric essay exploring personal suffering through the color blue, also wrote The Red Parts , an autobiographical account of the trial of her aunt’s murderer, may seem surprising. Not that any person cannot and does not contain multitudes but the two aesthetics may seem diametrically opposed until one looks at The Art of Cruelty and understands Nelson’s fascination with art on the one hand, and violence on the other. Nelson hashes out the intersection of the two across multiple essays. “One of this book’s charges,” she writes, “is to figure out how one might differentiate between works of art whose employment of cruelty seems to me worthwhile (for lack of a better word), and those that strike me as redundant, in bad faith, or simply despicable.” The Art of Cruelty is a self-proclaimed diagram of recent art and culture and does not promise to take sides, to deliver ethical or aesthetic claims masquerading as some declarative truth on the matter. So cruelty is very much approached from Nelson’s poetic sensibility, with a degree of nuance, and an attitude of reflection and curiosity but also one of a certain distance so that all the emotions—anger, disgust, discomfort, thrill etc.—can be viewed as part of a whole rather than in isolation. Cruelty, counterbalanced with compassion—especially with reference to Buddhism—is certainly not hailed by Nelson as a cause for celebration but worthy of rumination and analysis so that it is not employed tacitly and without recourse. No book could ever, I think, provide an exhaustive evaluation of this topic, nor is Nelson’s approach that of a philosopher or art-historian looking to propose a theory. Nevertheless, she dexterously, and creatively, manages to hold a mirror to our culture’s fascination with cruelty and invites us to reflect on our personal reasons for indulging it.  –Eleni Theodoropoulos, Editorial Fellow

Óscar Martinez, The Beast (2013)

For over a decade, Martinez has been a witness and a chronicler of the ground-level effects of the war on drugs, reporting from across Latin America with a special focus on Central America and his home country of El Salvador, where more recently he’s been writing about the bloody culture of MS-13 and other narco-cliques that have expanded their power. Before that, he was charting the plight of migrants running the terrible gauntlet across borders and through narco-controlled territories. Martinez rode the dreaded train known as “The Beast” and collected the stories of those traveling north on this perilous journey. While crime isn’t strictly the focus of the book, Martinez looks at the direct effects of mass crime at a regional/global level, as well as the outlaw communities springing up to prey on the vulnerable. The subject matter is dark, but Martinez writes with the terrible, piercing clarity of a Cormac McCarthy. The Beast is a dispatch from a nearly lawless land, where families struggle and suffer, narcos get richer, violence spreads, the drugs head north, the guns head south, and so it goes on. Forget the rhetoric, the politics, and the propaganda. The Beast is the real story of the drug war. “Where can you steer clear of bandits?” Martinez asks. “Where do the drugs go over? Where can you avoid getting kidnapped by the narcos? Where is there a spot left with no wall, no robbers, and no narcos? Nobody has been able to answer this last question.” To call this book prescient disregards how long our problems have persisted, and how long we’ve managed to ignore the chaos our country’s policies have created.  –Dwyer Murphy, CrimeReads Managing Editor

Matthew Desmond, Evicted (2016)

There are more evictions happening now, per capita, in the United States, than there were during the Great Depression. As it turns out, there’s a lot of money to be made from poverty—not, course, for those who need it, but for the landlords who orchestrate the kind of housing turnover that traps people in deeper and longer cycles of debt. Poverty in America has long been conflated with moral failure, but as Matthew Desmond’s Evicted illustrates in great detail, if there’s any moral failing happening, it’s with those who would take advantage of such systemic and generational iniquities.

Desmond, a Princeton-trained sociologist and MacArthur fellow, went to see for himself in 2008, at the height (depths?) of the housing crisis, undertaking a year-long study of eight Milwaukee-area families, spending six months in a mobile home and another six months in a rooming house, creating much more than a journalist’s snapshot of life as an American renter. With Evicted , Desmond has widened our perspective on cyclical hardship and its disproportionate impact on people of color, illustrating (with neither the leering nor the condescension of so much reporting on the poor) that eviction is more often a cause of poverty than a symptom.  –Jonny Diamond, Editor in Chief

Yuri Slezkine, The House of Government (2017)

I recommend this book to those who wish to demonstrate their physical strength in public and show off that they can read a giant Russian history book one-handed, but also I recommend this book to everyone, ever, in the world, because it’s so fantastic. At first glance, this is a lengthy tome inspired by a Tolstoyan approach to lyrical history, ostensibly concerned with the history of an apartment complex that was home to much of the early Soviet elite—and was subsequently depopulated by Stalinist purges. Within this apartment building, however, lay the central irony of the revolution—those who believed deeply enough in an idealistic system to embrace violent, repressive means of revolution, were soon enough subjected to those same mechanisms of repression. From this central irony, Slezkine, always concerned with how the micro fits into the macro, zooms out to look at the Soviets as just another bunch of millenarians (and to understand what an insult that is, you’ll have to pick up the book).  –Molly Odintz, CrimeReads Associate Editor

Richard Lloyd Parry, Ghosts of the Tsunami (2017)

Richard Lloyd Parry, Tokyo bureau chief for The Times of London, begins his book by describing the way his office building in Tokyo shook in March 2011 when an earthquake hit the city. He called his family and checked that they were OK and then walked through the streets to see the damage. Used to quakes, this one seemed bad, but not the worst he had lived through. Less than an hour after the earthquake, though, a tsunami killed an estimated 18,500 Japanese men, women and children. In Ghosts , Parry focuses his story on Okawa, a tiny costal village where an entire school and 74 children washed away. In somewhat fragmentary threads, Parry explores the families that survived, the ghosts that follow them, and the landscape of a place that will never be the same. In localizing the story in one community, Parry is able to clearly define the painfully individual fallout of a national tragedy. It is emotionally draining to read, which is a warning I give everyone when I recommend the book (which I do constantly). But it is one of my favorite books and I would be remiss not to include in our list for best nonfiction of the decade.  –Emily Firetog, Deputy Editor

Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing (2019)

I grew up in a town named after a body of water—Rye Brook—and went to a high school also named after that body of water—Blind Brook—but growing up, no one seemed to actually know where the brook was, at least none of the kids. We didn’t talk about it, except to note its hiddenness— it’s behind the school, someone once told me, while another person said it was behind that hotel, behind the park, behind the airport . Recently, I decided to find it on a map and noticed, for the first time, that the brook, far from being a hidden thing, defines the majority of Rye Brook’s borders. Recognizing this foundational feature of my hometown for the first time, more than a decade after I left it, was disorienting, completely re-rendering my perception of the place I thought I knew best.

My search that day came after I read Jenny Odell’s account of her similar awakening to the ecology of her hometown, Cupertino, and all the features in or around it: Calabazas Creek, nearby mountains, and the San Francisco Bay. “How could I have not noticed the shape of the place I lived?” she writes, and, later, describing her own disorientation in a way that resonates with my own, added, “Nothing is so simultaneously familiar and alien as that which has been present all along.”

One way of describing the premise of this book is to say “that which has been present all along” is reality itself: each of us, from day to day, living our physical lives in a physical place. But in 2019, life doesn’t usually feel like that; it feels like an onslaught of forces that aim to turn our attention away from this reality and monetize it in a shapeless virtual space. In that environment, Odell writes, doing “nothing,” or finding any way to disrupt the capitalistic drive to monetize, is an act of political resistance, even as she recognizes that not everyone has the economic security or social capital to opt out. “Just because this right is denied to many people doesn’t make it any less of a right or any less important,” she writes. This book also draws on philosophy, utopian movements, and labor organizing to describe how various people have attempted to “do nothing” in their own way throughout history, with an outlook that is grounded in ecology. (And bird watching!) Ultimately, Odell writes, the act of doing nothing creates space for the kind of contemplation and reflection that is essential to activism and to sustaining life. I experienced this book as a space of sanity and as a beginning; I hope you do, too.  –Corinne Segal, Senior Editor

Honorable Mentions

A selection of other books that we seriously considered for both lists—just to be extra about it (and because decisions are hard).

Peter Hessler, Country Driving (2010)  · Ron Chernow, Washington: A Life (2010)  ·  Barbara Demick, Nothing to Envy (2010)  · Marina Warner, Stranger Magic (2012)  · Jon Meacham, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power (2012)  · Oscar Martinez, The Beast (2013) · Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers (2013)  · Mary Ruefle, Madness, Rack, and Honey (2013)  · David Epstein, The Sports Gene (2013)  · Sheri Fink, Five Days at Memorial (2013)  · David Finkel, Thank You for Your Service  (2013) ·  George Packer, The Unwinding  (2013)  · Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything (2013) ·  Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous People’s History of the United States (2014) · Sarah Ruhl, 100 Essays I Don’t Have Time to Write (2014) ·  Olivia Laing, The Trip to Echo Spring (2014)  · Hermione Lee, Penelope Fitzgerald (2014) ·  Mary Beard, SPQR (2015) ·  Sam Quinones, Dreamland  (2015) ·  Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped From the Beginning (2016)  · Ruth Franklin, Shirley Jackson (2016) · Arlie Russell Hochschild, Strangers In Their Own Land (2016) ·  Margot Lee Shetterly, Hidden Figures (2016)  ·  Laura Dassow Walls, Henry David Thoreau: A Life (2017)  ·  David Grann, Killers of the Flower Moon (2017)  · Elizabeth McGuire, Red at Heart (2017) · Frances FitzGerald, The Evangelicals (2017) · Jeff Guinn, The Road to Jonestown  (2017) · Michael Tisserand, Krazy (2017) · Lawrence Jackson, Chester Himes (2017)   ·  Zora Neale Hurston, Barracoon (2018) · Beth Macy, Dopesick  (2018) · Shane Bauer, American Prison  (2018) · Eliza Griswold, Amity and Prosperity  (2018) · David Quammen, The Tangled Tree  (2018).

Emily Temple

Previous article, next article.

• RSS - Posts

Literary Hub

Created by Grove Atlantic and Electric Literature

Sign Up For Our Newsletters

How to Pitch Lit Hub

Advertisers: Contact Us

Privacy Policy

Support Lit Hub - Become A Member

Become a Lit Hub Supporting Member : Because Books Matter

For the past decade, Literary Hub has brought you the best of the book world for free—no paywall. But our future relies on you. In return for a donation, you’ll get an ad-free reading experience , exclusive editors’ picks, book giveaways, and our coveted Joan Didion Lit Hub tote bag . Most importantly, you’ll keep independent book coverage alive and thriving on the internet.

Become a member for as low as $5/month

An Introduction to Literary Nonfiction

Want to read more literary nonfiction? These are some popular sub-genres of literary nonfiction, with reading recommendations for each.

Senjuti Patra

Senjuti was born and raised in Bankura, a small town in India. A reluctant economist, fierce feminist and history enthusiast, she spends most of her time reading. Her interaction with other people is largely limited to running away from them or launching into passionate monologues about her last perfect read or her latest fictional crush.

View All posts by Senjuti Patra

Literary nonfiction, also called creative nonfiction, is an umbrella term that includes all writing that is based in reality and has been written with specific attention to the craft of writing, using literary techniques to talk about subjects that are not made up. Potentially any kind of nonfiction can be literary nonfiction, except, perhaps, technical and academic writing whose subjects and purpose demand precision and unambiguity. As Creative Nonfiction puts it, literary or creative nonfiction is simply true stories, well told.

Fiction and nonfiction have always shared techniques and approaches. Many novelists do extensive research to recreate a place or a time in the pages of their novels, and this enables them to create intricately detailed scenes, which help draw the reader in. Even speculative fiction narratives that operate in their own worlds conceived by the writers’ imagination often draw from the real world, and from the works of writers before them. Similarly, a mere recitation of dry facts do not make for compelling or convincing reading, and all influential works of nonfiction are characterized by a mastery of the craft and excellence in style. It is, then, a little unfair to define literary nonfiction as nonfiction that borrows elements of style and narration from fiction — since writers of nonfiction have skillfully wielded these tools in their work in all of literary history.

Literary Nonfiction: the Question of Ethics and the Line Between Fact and Fiction

Even though literary or creative nonfiction has been around for a long time, the relatively recent nomenclature and its establishment as a broad genre receiving wider readership has people questioning the propriety of using creativity in the presentation of facts. Can a text that creates or manipulates facts pass off as creative nonfiction?

In a 1987 article, Eric Heyne, following a distinction between fictional and factual narratives originally proposed by by John Searle, breaks down the determination of the factual nature of a text into two parts. The first is factual status — whether the writer intends their work to be perceived as factual. The second is factual adequacy — how true the facts that the writer proposes are. In other words, the intention of the author is what determines whether or not a text will be read as nonfiction. On the other hand, for a text, literary or not, to be factually adequate, or good nonfiction, its factual correctness has to pass the scrutiny of its readers.

Thank you for signing up! Keep an eye on your inbox. By signing up you agree to our terms of use

The scope for creativity in nonfiction is vast in style, structure, and narrative, but writers of good creative nonfiction cannot create facts or use their craft to deceive readers or manipulate the truth. The contract between the writer and the reader should be explicit — the narrative should allow the reader to distinguish between creative maneuvers by the author and objective truths. Literary nonfiction often involves more in-depth research, for the literary narrative has to be detailed to be compelling, and at the same time factually correct.

Types of Literary Nonfiction

Almost any subject under the sun can be approached with a creative, refreshing take and with the right arsenal of literary tools by the right person. Understandably, literary nonfiction comes in many forms. It can be personal, like memoirs, autobiography, or personal essays. It can be topical, like history, science writing, and nature writing. Here are some popular sub-genres of literary nonfiction, with reading recommendations for each.

Lyrical Memoir

The lyrical memoir is probably the flag bearer of the genre at the moment, with its seamless blending of personal stories with larger themes that resonate with readers, as well as poetic, engrossing narratives. Unlike autobiography, in which the author talks about their whole life, memoirs have a specific focus. Following are two examples, and you can find more here .

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou’s beautiful coming-of-age memoir is a classic of the sub-genre. This beautiful book about a young girl overcoming trauma inflicted on her by an oppressive racist society does not shy away from discussing intimate personal details, and does so with stunningly poetic prose.

H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald

There are three threads in this book — the author’s grief at the sudden death of her father, her experience training a goshawk she adopted shortly after her father’s death, and the writer T.H. White, who shared the author’s interest in falconry. These threads are artfully woven together in a moving memoir that is also great nature writing.

Personal Essays

In personal essays, a writer might explore a variety of subjects through a subjective, personal stand point. The are often anchored by a personal event that impacted the writer’s life or world view in a major way. Personal essay collections are a great point of entry into the genre, with their shorter format and specific narrative threads that hold the reader’s interest. Here are a couple to get you started.

Notes of a Native S on by James Baldwin

A classic of American literature, Notes of a Native Son is a collection of ten essays that established James Baldwin as a leading literary voice. The essays cover a variety of topics, ranging from literary criticism, life in Harlem to lives of black people outside America, informed by Baldwin’s experiences as an African American at the dawn of the Civil Rights Movement.

Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion

This collection of essays is a classic of the genre, and a portrait of America, especially California, in the 1960s. Joan Didion is one of the most prominent authors of literary nonfiction, and two of her more recent works, The Year of Magical Thinking and Blue Nights , are powerful explorations of grief.

Want more? Here is a list of 50 must-read contemporary essay collections .

Science Writing

Creative, literary treatment of scientific subjects make them accessible to lay-readers, and there are many authors today who write on a wide variety of scientific topics in engaging prose. My personal favorite are science history books, which not only break down complex scientific concepts, but also provide an account of the path through which humans arrived at this knowledge, a journey which is often as nail-biting as thrillers.

The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee

This is a superbly written book about the science and the history of genetics. Told with enormous empathy and backed by thorough research and expertise, the story of the discovery of the code that governs our lives is one of the most interesting stories I have ever read. Mukherjee’s Pulitzer prize winning history of cancer, The Emperor of all Maladies , is equally brilliant.

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

Silent Spring is credited with having launched the modern environmental movement. Centered around the adverse effects of the indiscriminate use of pesticides, this book was a timely warning against human arrogance about the ability to exploit the natural world. The far-reaching and long-lasting impact of Silent Spring is a testimony to the power of Carson’s writing.

You can find more recommendations here .

Narrative Journalism

Narrative journalism is reportage that uses techniques of storytelling to construct a gripping, but factual narrative. Through the use of literary techniques, narrative journalism often manages to have greater sway over the opinions of readers, and authors of this genre have sometimes successfully drawn public attention to injustices and catalyzed change.

Ten Days in a Mad-House by Nellie Bly

In 1887, Nellie Bly went undercover in one of New York City’s asylums to report first hand on the lives of its inhabitants. The horrors she bore witness to are the subject of this book, which is a precursor of both the stunt memoir and narrative journalism genres. Bly’s reportage shocked the public and eventually led to increased budget allocations for the asylum.

Hiroshima by John Hersey

John Hersey’s Hiroshima is one of the earliest examples of narrative journalism that helped usher in the age of New Journalism, as it was called then. Hersey interviewed six survivors of the nuclear attack, and these accounts opened the eyes of the American public to the enormous scale of the devastation that had been wreaked by the bombing and made them question the morality of nuclear warfare.

Here are some more examples of narrative journalism.

Narrative History

History is overflowing with important and exciting true stories waiting to be told. Any well written historical narrative can potentially read like a novel. Another genre that is a personal favorite, it is replete with gems that blend extensive research with skillful prose.

Figuring by Maria Popova

This book is written by Maria Popova, whose blog, Brain Pickings , is a great source for your daily dose of literary nonfiction. It is an ode to the never ending human search for meaning, through a narrative that blends together the lives of several artists, writers, scientists and visionaries, including Johannes Kepler, Maria Mitchell, Margaret Fuller, Emily Dickinson, and Rachel Carson, among others.

The Black Count by Tom Reiss

The Black Count is the true story of the man who inspired classics like The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers . General Alex Dumas, father of Alexander Dumas, was the son of a formerly enslaved person who rose through the ranks of the French Army. This true story of his life is an engaging tale of adventure in a multi-racial society.

Quotidian Nonfiction

I stumbled across this beautiful term in an essay in Creative Nonfiction , and it neatly fits two of the best nonfiction books I read recently. In the essay, Patrick Madden, author of Quotidiana , a collection of essays inspired by the commonplace, talks about the pleasures of slowing down to meditate on the ordinary components of everyday life. Another relatively recent and well known example of this category is Ross Gay’s uplifting Book of Delights . Indeed, there is something refreshingly calming to read about the quotidian, and the languorous, reflective tone of such books can accommodate exquisitely elegant prose.

The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey

When Elisabeth Tova Bailey was struck by a mysterious illness that confined her to the bed, she found company in a common woodland snail that was left in a pot of violets in her sick room by her friend. This book is a beautiful tale of resilience told through the mundane occurrences in the lives of the snail and its human observer.

How I Became A Tree by Sumana Roy

In this gorgeous book, Sumana Roy muses about the lives of trees, and what it would mean to live like one. She talks about tiny details from the natural world at length, putting into perspective our own cluttered existence within it.

The books and sub-genres discussed in this article are a very small fraction of what literary nonfiction has to offer, but I hope it will serve as a good introduction — especially if you are primarily a reader of fiction who is trying to get into nonfiction. Once you are through with this list, we have more books that you can read here and here .

You Might Also Like

An Introduction to Literary Nonfiction

Using Literary Techniques Usually Found in Fiction on Real-Life Events

• An Introduction to Punctuation
• Ph.D., Rhetoric and English, University of Georgia
• M.A., Modern English and American Literature, University of Leicester
• B.A., English, State University of New York

Like literary journalism , literary nonfiction is a type of prose that employs the literary techniques usually associated with fiction or poetry to report on persons, places, and events in the real world without altering facts.

The genre of literary nonfiction, also known as creative nonfiction, is broad enough to include travel writing, nature writing, science writing, sports writing, biography, autobiography, memoir, interviews, and familiar and personal essays. Literary nonfiction is alive and well, but it is not without its critics.

Here are several examples of literary nonfiction from noted authors:

• "The Cries of London," by Joseph Addison
• "Death of a Soldier," by Louisa May Alcott
• "A Glorious Resurrection," by Frederick Douglass
• "The San Francisco Earthquake," by Jack London
• "The Watercress Girl," by Henry Mayhew

Observations

• "The word literary masks all kinds of ideological concerns, all kinds of values, and is finally more a way of looking at a text , a way of reading...than an inherent property of a text." (Chris Anderson, "Introduction: Literary Nonfiction and Composition" in "Literary Nonfiction: Theory, Criticism, Pedagogy")
• Fictional Devices in Literary Nonfiction "One of the profound changes to have affected serious writing in recent years has been the spread of fiction and poetry techniques into literary nonfiction: the 'show, don’t tell' requirement, the emphasis on concrete sensory detail and avoidance of abstraction, the use of recurrent imagery as symbolic motif, the taste for the present tense, even the employment of unreliable narrators. There has always been some crossover between the genres. I am no genre purist, and welcome the cross-pollination, and have dialogue scenes in my own personal essays (as did Addison and Steele). But it is one thing to accept using dialogue scenes or lyrical imagery in a personal narrative, and quite another to insist that every part of that narrative be rendered in scenes or concrete sensory descriptions . A previous workshop teacher had told one of my students, 'Creative non-fiction is the application of fictional devices to memory.' With such narrow formulae, indifferent to nonfiction's full range of options, is it any wonder that students have started to shy away from making analytical distinctions or writing reflective commentary?" (Phillip Lopate, "To Show and to Tell: The Craft of Literary Nonfiction")
• Practical Nonfiction vs. Literary Nonfiction "Practical nonfiction is designed to communicate information in circumstances where the quality of the writing is not considered as important as the content. Practical nonfiction appears mainly in popular magazines, newspaper Sunday supplements, feature articles, and in self-help and how-to books... "Literary nonfiction puts emphasis on the precise and skilled use of words and tone , and the assumption that the reader is as intelligent as the writer. While information is included, insight about that information, presented with some originality, may predominate. Sometimes the subject of literary nonfiction may not at the onset be of great interest to the reader, but the character of the writing may lure the reader into that subject. "Literary nonfiction appears in books, in some general magazines such as The New Yorker , Harper's, the Atlantic , Commentary , the New York Review of Books , in many so-called little or small-circulation magazines, in a few newspapers regularly and in some other newspapers from time to time, occasionally in a Sunday supplement, and in book review media." (Sol Stein, Stein on Writing: A Master Editor of Some of the Most Successful Writers of Our Century Shares His Craft Techniques and Strategies)
• Literary Nonfiction in the English Department "It might be the case that composition studies...needs the category of 'literary nonfiction' to assert its place in the hierarchy of discourse comprising the modern English department. As English departments became increasingly centered on the interpretation of texts, it became increasingly important for compositionists to identify texts of their own." (Douglas Hesse, "The Recent Rise of Literary Nonfiction: A Cautionary Assay" in "Composition Theory for the Postmodern Classroom") "Whether critics are arguing about contemporary American nonfiction for historical or theoretical purposes, one of the primary (overt and usually stated) aims is to persuade other critics to take literary nonfiction seriously—to grant it the status of poetry, drama, and fiction." (Mark Christopher Allister, "Refiguring the Map of Sorrow: Nature Writing and Autobiography")
• Creative Nonfiction
• Interior Monologues
• What is Nature Writing?
• What Is Literary Journalism?
• Using Flashback in Writing
• What Is Colloquial Style or Language?
• Defining Nonfiction Writing
• literary present (verbs)
• What Are the Different Types and Characteristics of Essays?
• Definition and Examples of Humorous Essays
• Definition and Examples of Formal Essays
• Foreshadowing in Narratives
• Tips on Great Writing: Setting the Scene
• A Guide to All Types of Narration, With Examples

“Our present-tense human experience is like a living tree growing by a river. The current in the river is the passing of time. Our individual pasts are like the same tree fallen in the river, drowned now, and disintegrating with surprising speed. We resist time’s flow with our memories and language, with our stories ”   

~ David James Duncan

Jul 10, 2024

Featuring the writing of Sean Enfield, Robert W. Fieseler, Melody Glenn, Hannibal Hamlin, Jenna Hammerich, Timothy J. Hillegonds, Sarah Minor, Ali Saperstein.

River Teeth is a biannual journal combining the best of creative nonfiction, including narrative reportage, essays, and memoir, with critical essays that explore the impact of nonfiction narrative on the lives of its writers, subjects, and readers.

Beautiful Things

River Teeth ‘s weekly online magazine, Beautiful Things, features micro-essays (of 250 words or fewer) that look closely to find beauty and meaning in the everyday.

River Teeth is on

River Teeth Revisited

Here at River Teeth, we love essays. We love reading essays, choosing essays, and writing essays. We love essays that feel urgent, essays we can’t put down, and essays that don’t turn away when the truth gets difficult or slippery.

We also like to think about how the best essays work— and that’s why we have created the online feature: River Teeth Revisited .

Share your essays with River Teeth

River Teeth accepts submissions of creative nonfiction through Submittable from September 1 to December 1 and January 1 to April 1.

The Book Prize

River Teeth ‘s editors conduct a yearly national contest for a book-length manuscript of literary nonfiction in English. All manuscripts are screened by the co-editors of River Teeth.  The contest winner receives $1,000 and publication by The University of New Mexico Press.

Mother Prayer

By Sanobar Sabah Passionate red and sensuous saffron were my mother’s favorite colors. Inspired by the Bollywood queen of yesteryear, Rekha, my mother’s wardrobe was laden with glamorous chiffon sarees and handmade embroidered blouses from all over India...

 Sep 16, 2024 |  2 min read

A Child’s Work

By Carol Moody She’s elbow-deep inside the dryer, searching for that old Halloween costume—as though everything depends on wearing a frayed polyester police officer jacket. Her parents have separated for good, and the three-year-old little brother wants to play “hopspital”—announcing himself as “Dr. Butter"...

 Sep 9, 2024 |  2 min read

By Paulette Studley My mother thinks people are breaking into her house. Leprechauns. She tells me they’ve stolen her eyeglasses and supermarket receipts. At eighty years old, she sits beside me as I dole out antipsychotics to her pillbox and remind her that it’s not true...

 Sep 2, 2024 |  2 min read

Latest News …

Brooke Champagne Joins the River Teeth Team

Hello from the confluence of River Teeth here at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, on the kind of gorgeous fall day that makes a person want to leash up the dog and head out into the fields and woods–but not so fast because submissions opened on September 1st and we’ve got a lot of reading to do. Happily, we love to read. 

 Sep 11, 2024  8 min read

Beth Nguyen Announced As River Teeth’s 2024 Literary Nonfiction Book Prize Judge

by Ethan Rice "We are thrilled to announce the final judge for the 2024 River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Book Prize. Beth Nguyen is an author and professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she directs the MFA Program in Creative Writing..."

 May 2, 2024  2 min read

Meet River Teeth’s Spring 2024 Interns

Hello! We are excited to shine light on some of the creative minds and passionate spirits that have been working with us this past spring semester: our interns! From painting the beautiful rocks you might’ve seen at AWP to writing captions for Instagram posts to moving book reviews from our old website to our new website - our interns have been with us through it all and we couldn’t have done it without them. Each intern brings a unique blend of enthusiasm, curiosity, and dedication to our team. They had so much fun interviewing each other for this article, so we hope you enjoy getting a glimpse of them as much as we have loved working with them.

 Apr 26, 2024  12 min read

From journalism to instruction manuals, travel guides to historical CNF, nonfiction is one of the broadest and most versatile categories of writing. Indeed, we encounter many types of nonfiction genres in our everyday lives, including newspapers, social media, letters, reports, instruction manuals, and travel guides.

Rather than listing the numerous types of nonfiction in its broadest definition, this article will narrow our focus to creative nonfiction. Briefly defined, creative nonfiction is a genre of nonfiction that uses literary techniques more commonly used in poetry and fiction. This includes such techniques as dialogue, plot, and imagery. More to the point, the writer Lee Gutkind describes creative nonfiction as “true stories, well told.” If you’re interested in self-help, how-to-writing, and similar nonfiction writing forms, try Googling “prescriptive nonfiction” or “expository nonfiction.”

This article explores types of creative nonfiction—”true stories, well told.”

In this article, we will explore ten types of creative nonfiction genres, as well as the overlap between these genres and other types of nonfiction books we are more familiar with, such as historical nonfiction and autobiography. By the end of this article, you’ll also have a series of different types of nonfiction books to add to your reading list!

What are the types of nonfiction? Let’s examine common forms of the genre in detail.

One of the most common types of creative nonfiction, memoirs tell a story of the writer’s own life. Unlike autobiographies, however, memoirs do not need to be exhaustive. To understand the key similarities and differences between autobiographies and memoirs, check out this article on memoir-writing. It also offers a step-by-step guide to writing your own memoir, which is certainly one of the most accessible forms in creative nonfiction!

One of the most common types of creative nonfiction, memoir tells a story of the writer’s own life.

Memoirs are driven by narrative, and often connect the writer’s personal story to larger human themes, such as grief, family, and youth. To see what this means in action, check out Helen Macdonald’s H is for Hawk , which chronicles the year Macdonald spent training a northern goshawk following her father’s death. Other memoirs include William Finnegan’s Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life , Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House , Kiese Laymon’s Heavy: An American Memoir , and Tara Westover’s Educated .

Memoirs, however, can also be essay-length. A great example is David Sedaris’ “ The Youth in Asia .” Structured around Sedaris and his family’s memories of pets, this humorous essay is ultimately a story about grief, mortality and loss. This essay is excerpted from the memoir Me Talk Pretty One Day , and a recorded version can be found here . Other great examples of memoiristic essays include Alexander Chee’s “ Portrait of My Father ,” Megan Stielstra’s “ Here is My Heart ,” and Roxane Gay’s “ What We Hunger For. ” Memoiristic essays are often collected into essay collections, and can be a great way to approach writing your first book! Inspired? Check out this step-by-step guide to writing narrative essays !

2. Personal Essay

Like the memoir, the personal essay draws from the writer’s personal life and perspective, and often creates an intimate experience for the reader. However, personal essays are less narrative-driven. Instead, the action is often more internal and driven by thought. Great examples of thought-driven essays include Leslie Jamison’s “ The Empathy Exams ,” Tressie McMillan Cottom’s “ I Was Pregnant and in Crisis ,” and Yiyun Li’s “ To Speak Is to Blunder ,” an exploration of what it meant for the author to renounce her mother tongue. In this way, personal essays often deal with questions that have no easy answer. For the reader, the pleasure comes in witnessing the writer attempt to grapple with difficult conversations in a meaningful way. This is very much in line with the etymology of “essay,” which means “to try.”

Personal essays are less narrative-driven. Instead, the action is often more internal and driven by thought.

While memoirs gesture to larger human themes, personal essays draw direct connections between personal experience and societal stories. In fact, in many personal essays, personal experience is used as evidence for these societal stories. Often, personal essays engage the use of “braiding” – a structure that alternates between a personal story and a larger story – to illustrate the connections between the personal and the societal. Examples include: Eula Biss’ “ No Man’s Land ” and Clare Elena Boerigter’s “ Itasca, Alight ,” an essay that reflects on her experience as a wildfire-fighter. For book-length examples, check out Rebecca Solnit’s The Faraway Nearby , D.J. Waldie’s Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir , and Esmé Weijun Wang’s The Collected Schizophrenias .

3. Travel Writing

There are many different types of nonfiction travel writing, ranging from travel guides to blogs, journalism, and memoirs. Regardless of what form it takes, good travel writing helps your readers to imagine and experience an unfamiliar place. Travel writers thus use evocative prose that engages the senses with the details of a world you may not otherwise encounter. Classic examples include Jan Morris’ A mong the Cities and Ilija Trojanow’s Along the Ganges .

Good travel writing helps your readers to imagine and experience an unfamiliar place.

Sometimes, the adventure of travel is less important than the internal journey that the writer experiences. A great example of such a travel writing and memoir hybrid is Running in the Family . Twenty-five years after leaving for Canada, the writer Michael Ondaatje returns to his native Sri Lanka to sort out his family’s past. The book chronicles family stories, and a major plot point is Ondaatje’s seeking of reconciliation with a father he barely knew. Other books that fall into this category include Cheryl Strayed’s Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail , Pico Iyer’s The Lady and the Monk , and Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love .

There is yet another type of travel writing, one influenced by the flaneur tradition of writers who observe society by walking around without a particular destination in mind. Examples include Robert MacFarlane’s The Old Ways: A Journey On Foot , Rebecca Solnit’s Wanderlust , and Roger Deakin’s Waterlog: a Swimmer’s Journey Through Britain , which puts a new spin on the flaneur genre in its use of swimming, rather than walking.

To get into travel writing yourself, check out our course Fundamental of Travel Writing with Jennifer Billock!

4. Literary Journalism

Sometimes called “immersion journalism,” “narrative journalism,” or “new journalism,” literary journalism is a type of nonfiction that combines reporting with techniques and strategies associated with creative writing, such as character development. Literary journalists often write in a third-person limited or first person point of view. The goal of such works is not simply to deliver facts, but to spark a larger conversation among its readers. Examples include Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed , Michael Lewis’ The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine , and Anne Fadiman’s The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down .

Literary journalism is a type of nonfiction that combines reporting with techniques and strategies associated with creative writing, such as character development.

Literary journalism is a type of nonfiction that really came to the forefront in the 1960s with the New Journalism movement. Books that are a part of this tradition include Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem , Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test , and Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood , described by the author as a “nonfiction novel.”

5. Features

A feature is a form of journalistic writing that is longer than a news story, whose primary goal is to keep the reader up-to-date on the facts of a story. Features can either offer a more in-depth cover, or provide a different perspective of a developing story. Importantly, features do not have to cover breaking news. This type of writing often considers a variety of angles and is more immersive. There is more room for the writer to play creatively in terms of style and structure.

A feature is a form of journalistic writing that is longer than a news story, whose primary goal is to keep the reader up-to-date on the facts of a story.

A feature can be, but is not always, a form of literary journalism. There is a spectrum of feature pieces, including news features, profiles, trend reports, immersive features, and more “creative” features that draw on the author’s personal experiences. Thus, features are published on a greater variety of platforms that range from newspapers to literary magazines. Check out Adam Gopnik’s “ The World’s Weirdest Library ,” Rebecca Brill’s “ The World Association of Ugly People ,” and Zadie Smith’s “Meet Justin Bieber!” which can be found in her book Feel Free ,

6. Cultural Criticism

This is a type of nonfiction that examines and comments on a cultural aspect or product. Importantly, “culture” here does not differentiate between what we traditionally think of as “highbrow” or “lowbrow.” In fact, one of the goals of cultural criticism is to expand the definition of what constitutes “culture.” Thus, underlying cultural criticism is a resistance of elitist definitions of what culture is and who gets to define it.

This is a type of nonfiction that examines and comments on a cultural aspect or product.

Cultural criticism often employs a more zoomed-out perspective to connect everyday phenomena with larger cultural contexts. This is not to say that cultural criticism is necessarily written in general and impersonal language. In fact, many cultural critics employ personal experience as entrances into larger cultural conversations. Jia Tolentino’s “ Athleisure, Barre, and Kale: the Tyranny of the Ideal Woman ,” Eula Biss’ On Immunity , Wayne Koestenbaum’s My 1980s and Other Essays , and Wendy Rawlings’ “ Let’s Talk About Shredded Romaine Lettuce ” are great examples of this type of nonfiction prose.

7. Ekphrastic Essays

Ekphrasis, which comes from the Greek word for “description,” traditionally describes poems written about a work of visual art. In the contemporary literature landscape, however, ekphrasis can be written in both prose and poetry and about all forms of art.

Ekphrasis is writing, in poetry or prose, about another work of art.

There are many different approaches to writing ekphrastic essays. These may include writing about a work of art critically, writing about your experience, or even taking the more imaginative approach of speculating about the elements in a work of art. In “ Find Your Beach ,” for instance, Zadie Smith weaves the description of a beer ad with commentary on the culture of individualism in New York City. In “ What We Hunger For ,” Roxane Gay braids her discussion of female strength in The Hunger Games with her personal experiences. In “The Blue of Distance,” a series of three essays collected in A Field Guide to Getting Lost , Rebecca Solnit builds on the idea of distance and intimacy through meditating on various works of art.

8. Lyric Essay

The term “lyric essay” was coined in 1997 by John D’Agata and Deborah Tall, editors at the literary journal Seneca Review . “The lyric essay,” write D’Agata and Tall, “partakes of the poem in its density and shapeliness, its distillation of ideas and musicality of language. It partakes of the essay in its weight, in its overt desire to engage with facts, melding its allegiance to the actual with its passion for imaginative form.”

The lyric essay uses a type of nonfiction prose that is more poetic and compressed.

A relatively new genre, the lyric essay uses a type of nonfiction prose that is more poetic and compressed. Thus, it is often described as a hybrid of nonfiction and poetry. While it is difficult to pin down what a lyric essay is, the following are some characteristics of this genre:

• An emphasis on language and figurative elements, rather than on argument.
• An emphasis on exploration and experience, rather than reportage. While many lyric essays are research-heavy, they often draw on research in more suggestive ways, leaving gaps strategically to allow the reader to make connections
• A tendency to meditate. While lyric essays often draw on research and personal experience, they are less interested in crafting a linear narrative or plot, and more interested in meditative modes of writing.

Examples of lyric essays include Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric , Maggie Nelson’s Bluets , Amy Leach’s Things That Are , and Kathryn Nuernberger’s The Witch of Eye . For a more in-depth exploration of this form, check out this guide on the lyric essay .

9. Hermit Crabs & Other Borrowed Forms

Coined in 2003 by Brenda Miller and Suzanne Paola in their book Tell it Slant: Writing and Shaping Creative Nonfiction , the hermit crab adds a delightful variety to the types of nonfiction prose in contemporary creative nonfiction. The hermit crab is an essay that repurposes forms from everyday life – forms that we don’t generally regard as “literary” – as forms for creative nonfiction. For example, a hermit crab might use the forms of a how-to-manual, recipe, FAQs, or even a crossword puzzle.

The hermit crab is an essay that repurposes forms from everyday life—forms that we don’t generally regard as “literary”—as forms for creative nonfiction.

Often, such essays deal with topics that are tender or thorny (hence the reference to the soft-bodied hermit crab, which scavenge for shells to dwell in). In the writing process, the language and conventions of the form you’re borrowing can help to provide emotional distance between the writer and the content. An example is Dinty W. Moore’s “ Son of Mr. Green Jeans ,” an essay that uses the glossary form to write about the writer’s relationship to his father (it is also an abecedarian, which means that it is alphabetically arranged). Other examples are Randon Billings Noble’s “ The Heart as a Torn Muscle ” and Kristen Arnett’s short story “ Gator Butchering for Beginners .” For more inspiration, check out T he Shell Game: Writers Play with Borrowed Forms , an anthology put together by Kim Adrian.

In addition to hermit crabs, essayists also often borrow forms from poetry. Examples include Brenda Miller’s “Pantoum for 1979” and Elizabeth Bradfield’s Toward Antarctica , which uses the haibun form. For inspiration, check out a list of poetic forms in this guide .

10. Flash Nonfiction

Flash nonfiction refers to essays that range from a few hundred to 2,000 words, though most publications cap the word count at 1,000. Flash nonfiction emphasizes compression and precision. It often plays with the limits of how much you can gesture to, or how much plot you can develop within the space of a few hundred words.

Flash nonfiction emphasizes compression and precision.

Writing a micro-essay is a great way to start writing, experiment with new techniques, and capture everyday moments. For inspiration, check out Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights , the literary journal Brevity , and The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Nonfiction , an anthology edited by Dinty W. Moore.

Explore Different Types of Nonfiction Genres at Writers.com

With so many genres and forms at your disposal, there are infinite types of nonfiction stories you can tell. If you’re looking for additional feedback, as well as additional instruction on how to write a memoir, check out our schedule of nonfiction classes . Until then, pick a type of nonfiction and start writing!

[…] 10 Types of Nonfiction Books and Genres […]

It’s so interesting! But I want to study this types of Non – fiction writings. Help me, I need a tutor on that.

Salamat/THANK YOU!

Fabulous information. I never heard of hermit crab non-fiction and that it is the form that I use.

Leave a Comment Cancel Reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

The Finest Narrative Non-Fiction Essays

Narrative essays that I consider ideal models of the medium

• Linguistics

Authors like , , , , , and epitomise this way of writing.

I'm not a Writer , but I write to explore other things – anthropology, weird cultural quirks in the web development community, interaction design, and the rising field of " tools for thought ". These things are all factual and grounded in reality, but have interesting stories twisted around them. Ones I'm trying to tell in my little notes and essays.

Perhaps you're the same kind of non- Writer writer. The playful amateur kind who uses it to explore and communicate ideas, rather than making the medium part of your identity. But even amateurs want to be good. I certainly want to get good.

Knowing what you like is half the battle in liking what you create. In that spirit, I collect narrative non-fiction essays that I think are exceptional. They're worth looking at closely – their opening moves, sentence structure, turns of phrase, and narrative arcs.

The only sensible way to improve your writing is by echoing the work of other writers. Good artists copy and great artists steal quotes from Picasso.

You may want to start your own collection of lovely essays like this. There will certainly be some Real Writers who find my list trite and full of basic, mainstream twaddle. It probably is. I've done plenty of self-acceptance work and I'm okay with it.

Twaddle aside, the essays below are worth your attention.

by Paul Ford

Paul Ford explains code in 38,000 words and somehow makes it all accessible, technically accurate, narratively compelling, and most of all, culturally insightful and humanistic.

I have unreasonable feelings about this essay. It is, to me, perfect. Few essays take the interactive medium of the web seriously, and this one takes the cake. There is a small blue cube character, logic diagrams, live code snippets to run, GIFs, tangential footnotes, and a certificate of completion at the end.

by David Foster Wallace – Published under the title 'Shipping Out'

Forgive me for being a David Foster Wallace admirer. The guy had issues, but this account of his 7-day trip on a luxury cruiseliner expresses an inner monologue that is clarifying, rare and often side-splittingly hilarious.

He taught me it is 100% okay to write an entire side-novel in your footnotes if you need to.

by David Graeber

Graeber explores play and work from an anthropological perspective. He's a master of moving between the specific and the general. Between academic theory and personal storytelling. He's always ready with armfuls of evidence and citations but doesn't drown you in them.

by Malcolm Gladwell

This piece uses a typical Gladwellian style. He takes a fairly dull question – Why had ketchup stayed the same, while mustard comes in dozens of varieties? – and presents the case in a way that makes it reasonably intriguing. He's great at starting with specific characters, times and places to draw you in. There are always rich scenes, details, personal profiles, and a grand narrative tying it all together.

Some people find the classic New Yorker essay format overdone, but it relies on storytelling techniques that consistently work.

by Mark Slouka

by Joan Didion

1 Backlinks

On opening essays, conference talks, and jam jars.

TRY OUR FREE APP

Write your book in Reedsy Studio. Try the beloved writing app for free today.

Craft your masterpiece in Reedsy Studio

Plan, write, edit, and format your book in our free app made for authors.

Guides • Perfecting your Craft

Last updated on Feb 20, 2023

Creative Nonfiction: How to Spin Facts into Narrative Gold

About the author.

Reedsy's editorial team is a diverse group of industry experts devoted to helping authors write and publish beautiful books.

About Savannah Cordova

Savannah is a senior editor with Reedsy and a published writer whose work has appeared on Slate, Kirkus, and BookTrib. Her short fiction has appeared in the Owl Canyon Press anthology, "No Bars and a Dead Battery". 

About Rebecca van Laer

Rebecca van Laer is a writer, editor, and the author of two books, including the novella How to Adjust to the Dark. Her work has been featured in literary magazines such as AGNI, Breadcrumbs, and TriQuarterly.

Creative nonfiction is a genre of creative writing that approaches factual information in a literary way. This type of writing applies techniques drawn from literary fiction and poetry to material that might be at home in a magazine or textbook, combining the craftsmanship of a novel with the rigor of journalism. 

Here are some popular examples of creative nonfiction:

• The Collected Schizophrenias by Esmé Weijun Wang
• Intimations by Zadie Smith
• Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
• Translating Myself and Others by Jhumpa Lahiri
• The Madwoman in the Attic by Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar
• I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
• Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino

Creative nonfiction is not limited to novel-length writing, of course. Popular radio shows and podcasts like WBEZ’s This American Life or Sarah Koenig’s Serial also explore audio essays and documentary with a narrative approach, while personal essays like Nora Ephron’s A Few Words About Breasts and Mariama Lockington’s What A Black Woman Wishes Her Adoptive White Parents Knew also present fact with fiction-esque flair.

Writing short personal essays can be a great entry point to writing creative nonfiction. Think about a topic you would like to explore, perhaps borrowing from your own life, or a universal experience. Journal freely for five to ten minutes about the subject, and see what direction your creativity takes you in. These kinds of exercises will help you begin to approach reality in a more free flowing, literary way — a muscle you can use to build up to longer pieces of creative nonfiction.

If you think you’d like to bring your writerly prowess to nonfiction, here are our top tips for creating compelling creative nonfiction that’s as readable as a novel, but as illuminating as a scholarly article.

Write a memoir focused on a singular experience

Humans love reading about other people’s lives — like first-person memoirs, which allow you to get inside another person’s mind and learn from their wisdom. Unlike autobiographies, memoirs can focus on a single experience or theme instead of chronicling the writers’ life from birth onward.

For that reason, memoirs tend to focus on one core theme and—at least the best ones—present a clear narrative arc, like you would expect from a novel. This can be achieved by selecting a singular story from your life; a formative experience, or period of time, which is self-contained and can be marked by a beginning, a middle, and an end. 

When writing a memoir, you may also choose to share your experience in parallel with further research on this theme. By performing secondary research, you’re able to bring added weight to your anecdotal evidence, and demonstrate the ways your own experience is reflective (or perhaps unique from) the wider whole.

Example: The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking , for example, interweaves the author’s experience of widowhood with sociological research on grief. Chronicling the year after her husband’s unexpected death, and the simultaneous health struggles of their daughter, The Year of Magical Thinking is a poignant personal story, layered with universal insight into what it means to lose someone you love. The result is the definitive exploration of bereavement — and a stellar example of creative nonfiction done well.

📚 Looking for more reading recommendations? Check out our list of the best memoirs of the last century .

Tip: What you cut out is just as important as what you keep

When writing a memoir that is focused around a singular theme, it’s important to be selective in what to include, and what to leave out. While broader details of your life may be helpful to provide context, remember to resist the impulse to include too much non-pertinent backstory. By only including what is most relevant, you are able to provide a more focused reader experience, and won’t leave readers guessing what the significance of certain non-essential anecdotes will be.

💡 For more memoir-planning tips, head over to our post on outlining memoirs .

Of course, writing a memoir isn’t the only form of creative nonfiction that lets you tap into your personal life — especially if there’s something more explicit you want to say about the world at large… which brings us onto our next section.

Pen a personal essay that has something bigger to say

Personal essays condense the first-person focus and intimacy of a memoir into a tighter package — tunneling down into a specific aspect of a theme or narrative strand within the author’s personal experience.

Often involving some element of journalistic research, personal essays can provide examples or relevant information that comes from outside the writer’s own experience. This can take the form of other people’s voices quoted in the essay, or facts and stats. By combining lived experiences with external material, personal essay writers can reach toward a bigger message, telling readers something about human behavior or society instead of just letting them know the writer better.

Example: The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison

Leslie Jamison's widely acclaimed collection The Empathy Exams  tackles big questions (Why is pain so often performed? Can empathy be “bad”?) by grounding them in the personal. While Jamison draws from her own experiences, both as a medical actor who was paid to imitate pain, and as a sufferer of her own ailments, she also reaches broader points about the world we live in within each of her essays.

Whether she’s talking about the justice system or reality TV, Jamison writes with both vulnerability and poise, using her lived experience as a jumping-off point for exploring the nature of empathy itself.

Tip: Try to show change in how you feel about something

Including external perspectives, as we’ve just discussed above, will help shape your essay, making it meaningful to other people and giving your narrative an arc. 

Ultimately, you may be writing about yourself, but readers can read what they want into it. In a personal narrative, they’re looking for interesting insights or realizations they can apply to their own understanding of their lives or the world — so don’t lose sight of that. As the subject of the essay, you are not so much the topic as the vehicle for furthering a conversation.

Often, there are three clear stages in an essay:

• Initial state 
• Encounter with something external
• New, changed state, and conclusions

By bringing readers through this journey with you, you can guide them to new outlooks and demonstrate how your story is still relevant to them.

Had enough of writing about your own life? Let’s look at a form of creative nonfiction that allows you to get outside of yourself.

Tell a factual story as though it were a novel

The form of creative nonfiction that is perhaps closest to conventional nonfiction is literary journalism. Here, the stories are all fact, but they are presented with a creative flourish. While the stories being told might comfortably inhabit a newspaper or history book, they are presented with a sense of literary significance, and writers can make use of literary techniques and character-driven storytelling.

Unlike news reporters, literary journalists can make room for their own perspectives: immersing themselves in the very action they recount. Think of them as both characters and narrators — but every word they write is true. 

If you think literary journalism is up your street, think about the kinds of stories that capture your imagination the most, and what those stories have in common. Are they, at their core, character studies? Parables? An invitation to a new subculture you have never before experienced? Whatever piques your interest, immerse yourself.

Example: The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan

If you’re looking for an example of literary journalism that tells a great story, look no further than Michael Pollan’s The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World , which sits at the intersection of food writing and popular science. Though it purports to offer a “plant’s-eye view of the world,” it’s as much about human desires as it is about the natural world.

Through the history of four different plants and human’s efforts to cultivate them, Pollan uses first-hand research as well as archival facts to explore how we attempt to domesticate nature for our own pleasure, and how these efforts can even have devastating consequences. Pollan is himself a character in the story, and makes what could be a remarkably dry topic accessible and engaging in the process.

Tip: Don’t pretend that you’re perfectly objective

You may have more room for your own perspective within literary journalism, but with this power comes great responsibility. Your responsibilities toward the reader remain the same as that of a journalist: you must, whenever possible, acknowledge your own biases or conflicts of interest, as well as any limitations on your research. 

Thankfully, the fact that literary journalism often involves a certain amount of immersion in the narrative — that is, the writer acknowledges their involvement in the process — you can touch on any potential biases explicitly, and make it clear that the story you’re telling, while true to what you experienced, is grounded in your own personal perspective.

Approach a famous name with a unique approach 

Biographies are the chronicle of a human life, from birth to the present or, sometimes, their demise. Often, fact is stranger than fiction, and there is no shortage of fascinating figures from history to discover. As such, a biographical approach to creative nonfiction will leave you spoilt for choice in terms of subject matter.

Because they’re not written by the subjects themselves (as memoirs are), biographical nonfiction requires careful research. If you plan to write one, do everything in your power to verify historical facts, and interview the subject’s family, friends, and acquaintances when possible. Despite the necessity for candor, you’re still welcome to approach biography in a literary way — a great creative biography is both truthful and beautifully written.

Example: American Prometheus  by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin

Alongside the need for you to present the truth is a duty to interpret that evidence with imagination, and present it in the form of a story. Demonstrating a novelist’s skill for plot and characterization, Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s American Prometheus is a great example of creative nonfiction that develops a character right in front of the readers’ eyes .

American Prometheus follows J. Robert Oppenheimer from his bashful childhood to his role as the father of the atomic bomb, all the way to his later attempts to reckon with his violent legacy.

FREE COURSE

How to Develop Characters

In 10 days, learn to develop complex characters readers will love.

The biography tells a story that would fit comfortably in the pages of a tragic novel, but is grounded in historical research. Clocking in at a hefty 721 pages, American Prometheus distills an enormous volume of archival material, including letters, FBI files, and interviews into a remarkably readable volume. 

📚 For more examples of world-widening, eye-opening biographies, check out our list of the 30 best biographies of all time.

Tip: The good stuff lies in the mundane details

Biographers are expected to undertake academic-grade research before they put pen to paper. You will, of course, read any existing biographies on the person you’re writing about, and visit any archives containing relevant material. If you’re lucky, there’ll be people you can interview who knew your subject personally — but even if there aren’t, what’s going to make your biography stand out is paying attention to details, even if they seem mundane at first.

Of course, no one cares which brand of slippers a former US President wore — gossip is not what we’re talking about. But if you discover that they took a long, silent walk every single morning, that’s a granular detail you could include to give your readers a sense of the weight they carried every day. These smaller details add up to a realistic portrait of a living, breathing human being.

But creative nonfiction isn’t just writing about yourself or other people. Writing about art is also an art, as we’ll see below.

Put your favorite writers through the wringer with literary criticism

Literary criticism is often associated with dull, jargon-laden college dissertations — but it can be a wonderfully rewarding form that blurs the lines between academia and literature itself. When tackled by a deft writer, a literary critique can be just as engrossing as the books it analyzes.

Many of the sharpest literary critics are also poets, poetry editors , novelists, or short story writers, with first-hand awareness of literary techniques and the ability to express their insights with elegance and flair. Though literary criticism sounds highly theoretical, it can be profoundly intimate: you’re invited to share in someone’s experience as a reader or writer — just about the most private experience there is.

Example: The Madwoman in the Attic by Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar

Take The Madwoman in the Attic by Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, a seminal work approaching Victorian literature from a feminist perspective. Written as a conversation between two friends and academics, this brilliant book reads like an intellectual brainstorming session in a casual dining venue. Highly original, accessible, and not suffering from the morose gravitas academia is often associated with, this text is a fantastic example of creative nonfiction.

Tip: Remember to make your critiques creative

Literary criticism may be a serious undertaking, but unless you’re trying to pitch an academic journal, you’ll need to be mindful of academic jargon and convoluted sentence structure. Don’t forget that the point of popular literary criticism is to make ideas accessible to readers who aren’t necessarily academics, introducing them to new ways of looking at anything they read. 

If you’re not feeling confident, a professional nonfiction editor could help you confirm you’ve hit the right stylistic balance .

Give your book the help it deserves

The best editors, designers, and book marketers are on Reedsy. Sign up for free and meet them.

Learn how Reedsy can help you craft a beautiful book.

Is creative nonfiction looking a little bit clearer now? You can try your hand at the genre , or head to the next post in this guide and discover online classes where you can hone your skills at creative writing.

Join a community of over 1 million authors

Reedsy is more than just a blog. Become a member today to discover how we can help you publish a beautiful book.

Bring your publishing dreams to life

The world's best editors, designers, and marketers are on Reedsy. Come meet them.

1 million authors trust the professionals on Reedsy. Come meet them.

Enter your email or get started with a social account:

Most Read in 2021

Year-End Lists!

We don’t publish a lot of lists. But this year, having launched this new website with nearly complete access to 30 years of magazine archives, we thought it seemed like a good time to look back at the stories that resonated with our readers. 

In that spirit, we’ve compiled the most-read pieces published on our website in 2021, as well as the most-read work from our archives. 

And for good measure, we’ve pulled together a few pieces worth an honorable mention; our favorite Sunday Short Reads ; CNF content that was republished elsewhere; and the best advice, inspiration, and think pieces from some of our favorite publications.

Finally, if you enjoy what follows, please know there’s plenty more! We have a soft paywall on our site, which allows for three free reads a month. To get unlimited access for as little as $4/month, simply subscribe today.

Top 10 Published in 2021

• Almost Behind Us A dental emergency interrupts a meaningful anniversary // JENNIFER BOWERING DELISLE
• El Valle, 1991 An early lesson in strength and fragility // AURELIA KESSLER
• Stay at Home All those hours alone with a new baby can be rough // JARED HANKS
• The Desert Was His Home There are many things we don’t know about Mr. Otomatsu Wada, and a few things we do // ERIC L. MULLER
• Just a Big Cat The dramatic boredom of jury duty // ERICA GOSS
• What Will We Do for Fun Now? Her parents survived World War II and the Blitz just fine … didn’t they? // JANE RATCLIFFE
• Harriet Two brothers and a turtle // TYLER McANDREW
• Rango Getting existential at a funeral for a lizard   // JARRETT G. ZIEMER
• Mouse Lessons from a hamster emergency // BEVERLY PETRAVICIUS
• Roxy & the Worm Box Trying to recapture a childhood love of dirt // ANJOLI ROY

Top 5 from the Archive

• Picturing the Personal Essay A visual guide // TIM BASCOM
• The 5 Rs of Creative Nonfiction The essayist at work   // LEE GUTKIND
• The Line Between Fact & Fiction Do not add, and do not deceive // ROY PETER CLARK
• The Braided Essay as Social Justice Action The braided essay may be the most effective form for our times // NICOLE WALKER
• On Fame, Success, and Writing Like a Mother#^@%*& An interview with Cheryl Strayed   // ELISSA BASSIST

Honorable Mention ( ICYMI Essays)

• Latinx Heritage Month Who do you complain to when it’s HR you have a problem with? // MELISSA LUJAN MESKU
• Women’s Work Sometimes, freedom means choosing your obligations // EILEEN GARVIN
• Bloodlines and Bitter Syrup Avoiding prison in Huntsville, Texas, is nearly impossible // WILL BRIDGES
• Stealth A nontraditional couple struggles with keeping part of their life together private while undertaking the public act of filing for marriage // HEATHER OSTERMAN-DAVIS
• Something Like Vertigo An environmental writer sees parallels between her father’s declining equilibrium and a world turned upside down   // ELIZABETH RUSH

Our favorite Sunday Short Reads from our partners 

from BREVITY

• What Joy Looks Like SSR #128  // DORIAN FOX
• How to Do Nothing SSR #156 // ABIGAIL THOMAS

from DIAGRAM

• At 86, My Grandmother Regrets Two Things SSR #134 // DIANA XIN
• The Seedy Corner SSR #140 // KIMBERLY GARZA

from RIVER TEETH

• Waste Not SSR #131 // DESIREE COOPER
• This Is Orange SSR #141 // JILL KOLONGOWSKI

from SWEET LITERARY

• The Pilgrim’s Prescription SSR #122  // CAROLYN ALESSIO
• Leaves in the Hall SSR #160 // ANNE GUDGER

Our favorite stories from around the internet. 

Advice & Inspiration

• In Praise of the Meander Rebecca Solnit on letting nonfiction narrative find its own way (via Lit Hub )
• What’s Missing Here? A Fragmentary, Lyric Essay About Fragmentary, Lyric Essays Julie Marie Wade on the mode that never quite feels finished (via Lit Hub )
• Getting Honest about Om A brief essay on audience (via Brevity )
• Using the Personal to Write the Global Intimate details, personal exploration and respect for facts (via Nieman Storyboard )
• Fix Your Scene Shapes And quickly improve your manuscript (via Jane Friedman’s blog)

The State of Nonfiction

• What the NYT ‘Guest Essay’ Means for the Future of Creative Nonfiction Description (via Brevity )
• How the Role of Personal Expression and Experience Is Changing Journalism On the future of the newsroom (via Poynter )
• 50 Shades of Nuance in a Polarized World An essayist ponders when to write black-and-white polemics that attract clicks, and when to be more considered (via Nieman Storyboard )
• These Literary Memoirs Take a Different Tack Description (via NY Times )
• The Politics of Gatekeeping On reconsidering the ethics of blind submissions (via Poets & Writers )

Examples of Creative Nonfiction: What It Is & How to Write It

When most people think of creative writing, they picture fiction books – but there are plenty of examples of creative nonfiction. In fact, creative nonfiction is one of the most interesting genres to read and write. So what is creative nonfiction exactly? 

More and more people are discovering the joy of getting immersed in content based on true life that has all the quality and craft of a well-written novel. If you are interested in writing creative nonfiction, it’s important to understand different examples of creative nonfiction as a genre. 

If you’ve ever gotten lost in memoirs so descriptive that you felt you’d walked in the shoes of those people, those are perfect examples of creative nonfiction – and you understand exactly why this genre is so popular.

But is creative nonfiction a viable form of writing to pursue? What is creative nonfiction best used to convey? And what are some popular creative nonfiction examples?

Today we will discuss all about this genre, including plenty of examples of creative nonfiction books – so you’ll know exactly how to write it. 

This Guide to Creative Nonfiction Covers:

Need A Nonfiction Book Outline?

What is Creative Nonfiction?

Creative nonfiction is defined as true events written about with the techniques and style traditionally found in creative writing . We can understand what creative nonfiction is by contrasting it with plain-old nonfiction. 

Think about news or a history textbook, for example. These nonfiction pieces tend to be written in very matter-of-fact, declarative language. While informative, this type of nonfiction often lacks the flair and pleasure that keep people hooked on fictional novels.

Imagine there are two retellings of a true crime story – one in a newspaper and the other in the script for a podcast. Which is more likely to grip you? The dry, factual language, or the evocative, emotionally impactful creative writing?

Podcasts are often great examples of creative nonfiction – but of course, creative nonfiction can be used in books too. In fact, there are many types of creative nonfiction writing. Let’s take a look!

Types of creative nonfiction

Creative nonfiction comes in many different forms and flavors. Just as there are myriad types of creative writing, there are almost as many types of creative nonfiction.

Some of the most popular types include:

Literary nonfiction

Literary nonfiction refers to any form of factual writing that employs the literary elements that are more commonly found in fiction. If you’re writing about a true event (but using elements such as metaphor and theme) you might well be writing literary nonfiction.

Writing a life story doesn’t have to be a dry, chronological depiction of your years on Earth. You can use memoirs to creatively tell about events or ongoing themes in your life.

If you’re unsure of what kind of creative nonfiction to write, why not consider a creative memoir? After all, no one else can tell your life story like you. 

Nature writing

The beauty of the natural world is an ongoing source of creative inspiration for many people, from photographers to documentary makers. But it’s also a great focus for a creative nonfiction writer. Evoking the majesty and wonder of our environment is an endless source of material for creative nonfiction. 

Travel writing

If you’ve ever read a great travel article or book, you’ll almost feel as if you’ve been on the journey yourself. There’s something special about travel writing that conveys not only the literal journey, but the personal journey that takes place.

Writers with a passion for exploring the world should consider travel writing as their form of creative nonfiction. 

For types of writing that leave a lasting impact on the world, look no further than speeches. From a preacher’s sermon, to ‘I have a dream’, speeches move hearts and minds like almost nothing else. The difference between an effective speech and one that falls on deaf ears is little more than the creative skill with which it is written. 

Biographies

Noteworthy figures from history and contemporary times alike are great sources for creative nonfiction. Think about the difference between reading about someone’s life on Wikipedia and reading about it in a critically-acclaimed biography.

Which is the better way of honoring that person’s legacy and achievements? Which is more fun to read? If there’s someone whose life story is one you’d love to tell, creative nonfiction might be the best way to do it. 

So now that you have an idea of what creative nonfiction is, and some different ways you can write it, let’s take a look at some popular examples of creative nonfiction books and speeches.

Examples of Creative Nonfiction

Here are our favorite examples of creative nonfiction:

1. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

No list of examples of creative nonfiction would be complete without In Cold Blood . This landmark work of literary nonfiction by Truman Capote helped to establish the literary nonfiction genre in its modern form, and paved the way for the contemporary true crime boom.  

2. A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast is undeniably one of the best creative memoirs ever written. It beautifully reflects on Hemingway’s time in Paris – and whisks you away into the cobblestone streets.  

3. World of Wonders by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

If you’re looking for examples of creative nonfiction nature writing, no one does it quite like Aimee Nezhukumatathil. World of Wonders  is a beautiful series of essays that poetically depicts the varied natural landscapes she enjoyed over the years. 

4. A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson is one of the most beloved travel writers of our time. And A Walk in the Woods is perhaps Bryson in his peak form. This much-loved travel book uses creativity to explore the Appalachian Trail and convey Bryson’s opinions on America in his humorous trademark style.

5. The Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln

 While most of our examples of creative nonfiction are books, we would be remiss not to include at least one speech. The Gettysburg Address is one of the most impactful speeches in American history, and an inspiring example for creative nonfiction writers.

6. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Few have a way with words like Maya Angelou. Her triumphant book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings , shows the power of literature to transcend one’s circumstances at any time. It is one of the best examples of creative nonfiction that truly sucks you in.

7. Hiroshima by John Hershey

Hiroshima is a powerful retelling of the events during (and following) the infamous atomic bomb. This journalistic masterpiece is told through the memories of survivors – and will stay with you long after you’ve finished the final page.

8. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

If you haven’t read the book, you’ve probably seen the film. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert is one of the most popular travel memoirs in history. This romp of creative nonfiction teaches us how to truly unmake and rebuild ourselves through the lens of travel.

9. Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris

Never has language learning brought tears of laughter like Me Talk Pretty One Day . David Sedaris comically divulges his (often failed) attempts to learn French with a decidedly sadistic teacher, and all the other mishaps he encounters in his fated move from New York to Paris.

10. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

Many of us had complicated childhoods, but few of us experienced the hardships of Jeannette Walls. In The Glass Castle , she gives us a transparent look at the betrayals and torments of her youth and how she overcame them with grace – weaving her trauma until it reads like a whimsical fairytale.

Now that you’ve seen plenty of creative nonfiction examples, it’s time to learn how to write your own creative nonfiction masterpiece.

Tips for Writing Creative Nonfiction

Writing creative nonfiction has a lot in common with other types of writing. (You won’t be reinventing the wheel here.) The better you are at writing in general, the easier you’ll find your creative nonfiction project. But there are some nuances to be aware of.

Writing a successful creative nonfiction piece requires you to:

Choose a form

Before you commit to a creative nonfiction project, get clear on exactly what it is you want to write. That way, you can get familiar with the conventions of the style of writing and draw inspiration from some of its classics.

Try and find a balance between a type of creative nonfiction you find personally appealing and one you have the skill set to be effective at. 

Gather the facts

Like all forms of nonfiction, your creative project will require a great deal of research and preparation. If you’re writing about an event, try and gather as many sources of information as possible – so you can imbue your writing with a rich level of detail.

If it’s a piece about your life, jot down personal recollections and gather photos from your past. 

Plan your writing

Unlike a fictional novel, which tends to follow a fairly well-established structure, works of creative nonfiction have a less clear shape. To avoid the risk of meandering or getting weighed down by less significant sections, structure your project ahead of writing it.

You can either apply the classic fiction structures to a nonfictional event or take inspiration from the pacing of other examples of creative nonfiction you admire. 

You may also want to come up with a working title to inspire your writing. Using a free book title generator is a quick and easy way to do this and move on to the actual writing of your book.

Draft in your intended style

Unless you have a track record of writing creative nonfiction, the first time doing so can feel a little uncomfortable. You might second-guess your writing more than you usually would due to the novelty of applying creative techniques to real events. Because of this, it’s essential to get your first draft down as quickly as possible.

Rewrite and refine

After you finish your first draft, only then should you read back through it and critique your work. Perhaps you haven’t used enough source material. Or maybe you’ve overdone a certain creative technique. Whatever you happen to notice, take as long as you need to refine and rework it until your writing feels just right.

Ready to Wow the World With Your Story?

You know have the knowledge and inspiring examples of creative nonfiction you need to write a successful work in this genre. Whether you choose to write a riveting travel book, a tear-jerking memoir, or a biography that makes readers laugh out loud, creative nonfiction will give you the power to convey true events like never before.  

Who knows? Maybe your book will be on the next list of top creative nonfiction examples!

Join the Community

Join 100,000 other aspiring authors who receive weekly emails from us to help them reach their author dreams. Get the latest product updates, company news, and special offers delivered right to your inbox.

The Readable Blog

• Content Marketing
• Readability News
• The Joy of English

Blurring the lines: what is Literary Nonfiction?

Nonfiction. The very term conjures images. Dry facts, historical accounts, and scientific reports. But what if the lines between fact and storytelling are blurred? A captivating genre that reads more like a novel than a textbook? Enter literary nonfiction. A compelling world where truth meets artistry, and the real becomes riveting.

What is literary nonfiction?

Literary nonfiction is also known as creative nonfiction. It defies the traditional boundaries of factual writing. It delves into true stories, historical events, and personal experiences. It weaves them with the narrative techniques and stylistic flourishes more commonly associated with fiction. Think vivid descriptions, evocative language, and character development. All are employed to illuminate the complexities of the real world.

This fusion of fact and artistry has been around for a while. From the philosophical musings of Montaigne's 'Essays' to the social commentary of George Orwell's 'Down and Out in Paris and London'. Authors have long explored the intersection of truth and storytelling. However, the term 'literary nonfiction' gained prominence in the latter half of the 20th century. Writers like Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, and Joan Didion pushed the boundaries of the genre.

Why choose literary nonfiction?

So, why opt for literary nonfiction over traditional journalism or academic writing? Here are some key reasons:

• Engagement. Literary nonfiction electrifies facts. By employing narrative techniques, it draws readers in. It makes complex topics more accessible and engaging. Look at Oliver Sacks's ‘ The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat ’. Neurological case studies become tales of human resilience and the power of the mind.
• Emotional connection. Literary nonfiction doesn't shy away from the emotional core of a story. Authors can delve into the motivations, fears, and desires of individuals caught up in the topic. Historical events, scientific discoveries, or personal journeys. This emotional connection allows readers not just to understand the 'what'. It’s also the 'why' behind the facts. This fosters empathy and a deeper understanding of the subject matter. 
• Multiple perspectives. Journalism often presents a single, objective viewpoint. Literary nonfiction can incorporate multiple perspectives. This allows readers to engage with different sides of an issue. They can grapple with conflicting narratives and form their own conclusions. For instance, John Krakauer's 'Into Thin Air'. This chronicles the Mount Everest disaster. It weaves together the experiences of climbers, guides, and rescue personnel. This gives readers a multifaceted view of the tragedy.

The allure of the ambiguous: ethical challenges

The marriage of fact and artistry has undeniable benefits. But it also raises questions about the nature of truth in literary nonfiction. Here are some challenges to consider:

• Subjectivity. The author's voice and perspective are central to literary nonfiction. This inevitably introduces subjectivity into the narrative. Events and experiences are filtered through the author's lens. This potentially shapes the reader's perception of the truth. Consider Rebecca Solnit's 'Men Explain Things to Me'. This is a collection of essays exploring gender power dynamics. Her anecdotes are powerful. Some might argue that these are subjective experiences and not necessarily representative of all women. However, many women can relate.
• Scene construction
• Character development

These elements enhance readability. But they raise questions about the line between factual representation and artistic embellishment. Did a conversation truly play out exactly as described? Did the author fabricate internal monologues to enhance a character's portrayal? The ambiguity can be both intriguing and unsettling.

• Accuracy concerns. The reliance on personal narratives and subjective interpretations can lead to accuracy concerns. Literary nonfiction authors generally strive for truthfulness. Inevitably, memories can be unreliable. Eyewitness accounts can be subjective. Readers need to approach the genre with a critical eye. Consider the author's background, potential biases, and the sources used for research.

Navigating the genre

The potential for subjectivity and creative license doesn't negate the value of literary nonfiction.  Here are some tips for approaching the genre critically:

• Research the author. Learn about the writer's background, biases, and previous work. This context can help you understand their perspective and potential slants within the narrative.
• Consider the sources. Look for authors who use credible sources to substantiate their claims. Especially for historical events or scientific topics.
• Read with a critical eye. Don't simply accept everything as fact. Question the author's choices. Note the evidence presented. Be aware of potential biases shaping the narrative.

Literary nonfiction offers a unique lens on the world. It allows us to explore complex realities through the power of storytelling. It invites us to both learn about topics and feel the emotional weight of these experiences. By blurring the lines between fact and fiction, it fosters a deeper connection with the subject matter. This prompts us to question, analyse, and ultimately, form our own understanding of the truth.

Case studies

To truly appreciate the power of literary nonfiction, let's delve into some notable examples.

Truman Capote's 'In Cold Blood'

This groundbreaking work of investigative journalism redefined the genre. Capote meticulously researched the Clutter family murders. He wove factual details with an intimate portrayal of the victims, perpetrators, and the surrounding community. The result is a chilling exploration of multiple themes. Violence, the American psyche, and the ethical complexities of storytelling.

Susan Orlean's 'The Orchid Thief'

This is a captivating blend of true crime and botanical exploration. It follows the bizarre story of orchid poacher John Laroche. Orlean goes beyond the crime itself. She delves into the world of orchid collectors and enthusiasts.  The book raises questions about obsession, desire, and the value placed on the natural world.

Ta-Nehisi Coates's 'Between the World and Me'

This powerful letter to Coates's son explores the realities of being Black in America. It weaves personal anecdotes with historical accounts of racial injustice, creating a poignant and thought-provoking exploration of race, identity, and the struggle for freedom.

Laura Kelly

Laura is a freelance writer and worked at Readable for a number of years. Laura is well-versed in optimising content for readability and Readable's suite of tools. She aims to write guides that help you make the most out of Readable.

7 Days Free Readability Scoring

Try Readable for 7 days entirely free, or cancel any time if you don't love it.

• What is readability?
• Website readability
• Text and file readability
• Readability API
• Readability formulas
• Spelling and grammar
• Pricing and Sign up
• Readability handbook
• Knowledge base
• Grammar Resources
• Terms and conditions
• Data processing

Readable Blog

• Grammar Blog

Latest blogs

• What Google’s latest Helpful Content update means for writers
• Demystifying AP Style: A guide to clarity and consistency
• How fanfiction can help you become a better writer
• More Blog Posts

Copyright © 2011 - 2024 Readable. Part of the Added Bytes family. All Rights Reserved. Unit 11, Bridgers Business Barns, Bridgers Farm, Langton Lane, Hassocks, BN6 9HA Company: #8026399           VAT: #193695360

Nonfiction Essay

Nonfiction essay generator.

While escaping in an imaginary world sounds very tempting, it is also necessary for an individual to discover more about the events in the real world and real-life stories of various people. The articles you read in newspapers and magazines are some examples of nonfiction texts. Learn more about fact-driven information and hone your essay writing skills while composing a nonfiction essay.

10+ Nonfiction Essay Examples

1. creative nonfiction essay.

2. Narrative Nonfiction Reflective Essay

Size: 608 KB

3. College Nonfiction Essay

Size: 591 KB

4. Non-Fiction Essay Writing

Size: 206 KB

5. Nonfiction Essay Reminders

Size: 45 KB

6. Nonfiction Essay Template

Size: 189 KB

7. Personal Nonfiction Essay

Size: 51 KB

8. Teachers Nonfiction Essay

Size: 172 KB

9. Creative Nonfiction Assignment Essay

Size: 282 KB

10. Nonfiction Descriptive Essay

11. Literary Arts Nonfiction Essay

Size: 93 KB

What Is a Nonfiction Essay?

Nonfiction essay refers to compositions based on real-life situations and events. In addition, it also includes essays based on one’s opinion and perception. There are different purposes for writing this type of essay. Various purposes use different approaches and even sometimes follow varying formats. Educational and informative essays are some examples of a nonfiction composition. 

How to Compose a Compelling Nonfiction Essay

When you talk about creative writing, it is not all about creating fictional stories. It also involves providing a thought-provoking narrative and description of a particular subject. The quality of writing always depends on how the writers present their topic. That said, keep your readers engaged by writing an impressive nonfiction paper.

1. Know Your Purpose

Before you start your essay, you should first determine the message you want to deliver to your readers. In addition, you should also consider what emotions you want to bring out from them. List your objectives beforehand. Goal-setting will provide you an idea of the direction you should take, as well as the style you should employ in writing about your topic on your essay paper.

2. Devise an Outline

Now that you have a target to aim for, it is time to decide on the ideas you want to discuss in each paragraph. To do this, you can utilize a blank outline template. Also, prepare an essay plan detailing the structure and the flow of the message of your essay. Ensure to keep your ideas relevant and timely.

3. Generate Your Thesis Statement

One of the most crucial parts of your introduction is your thesis statement . This sentence will give the readers an overview of what to expect from the whole document. Aside from that, this statement will also present the main idea of the essay content. Remember to keep it brief and concise.

4. Use the Appropriate Language

Depending on the results of your assessment in the first step, you should tailor your language accordingly. If you want to describe something, use descriptive language. If you aim to persuade your readers, you should ascertain to use persuasive words. This step is essential to remember for the writers because it has a considerable impact on achieving your goals.

What are the various types of nonfiction articles?

In creatively writing nonfiction essays, you can choose from various types. Depending on your topic, you can write a persuasive essay , narrative essay, biographies, and even memoirs. In addition, you can also find nonfiction essay writing in academic texts, instruction manuals, and even academic reports . Even if most novels are fiction stories, there are also several nonfictions in this genre.

Why is writing nonfiction essays necessary?

Schools and universities use nonfiction essays as an instrument to train and enhance their students’ skills in writing. The reason for this is it will help them learn how to structure paragraphs and also learn various skills. In addition, this academic essay can also be a tool for the teachers to analyze how the minds of their students digest situations.

How can I write about a nonfiction topic?

A helpful tip before crafting a nonfiction essay is to explore several kinds of this type of writing. Choose the approach and the topic where you are knowledgeable. Now that you have your lesson topic, the next step is to perform intensive research. The important part is to choose a style on how to craft your story.

Each of us also has a story to tell. People incorporate nonfiction writing into their everyday lives. Your daily journal or the letters you send your friends all belong under this category of composition. Writing nonfiction essays are a crucial outlet for people to express their emotions and personal beliefs. We all have opinions on different events. Practice writing nonfiction articles and persuade, entertain, and influence other people. 

Text prompt

• Instructive
• Professional

Write about the influence of technology on society in your Nonfiction Essay.

Discuss the importance of environmental conservation in your Nonfiction Essay.

Purdue Online Writing Lab Purdue OWL® College of Liberal Arts

Literary Journalism

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

This page is brought to you by the OWL at Purdue University. When printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice.

Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.

Literary journalism is another essay form that is best reserved for intermediate and advanced level courses, but it can be incorporated into introductory and composition courses. Literary journalism is the creative nonfiction form that comes closest to newspaper and magazine writing. It is fact-driven and requires research and, often, interviews.

Literary journalism is sometimes called “immersion journalism” because it requires a closer, more active relationship to the subject and to the people the literary journalist is exploring. Like journalistic writing, the literary journalism piece should be well-researched, focus on a brief period of time, and concentrate on what is happening outside of the writer’s small circle of personal experience and feelings.

An Example and Discussion of a Literary Journalism

The following excerpt from George Orwell is a good example of literary journalism. Orwell wrote about the colonial regime in Marrakech. His father was a colonial officer, so Orwell was confronted with the reality of empire from an early age, and that experience is reflected in his literary journalism piece, Marrakech :

Orwell isn’t writing a reflective, personal essay about his travels through Marrakech. Neither is he writing a memoir about what it was like to be the son of a colonial officer, nor how that experience shaped his adult life. He writes in a descriptive way about the Jewish quarters in Marrakech, about the invisibility of the “natives,” and about the way citizenship doesn’t ensure equality under a colonial regime.

Generating Ideas for Literary Journalism

One way to incorporate literary journalism into an introductory or intermediate level course is simply to have students write personal essays first. Then the students can go back and research the facts behind the personal experiences related in their essays. They can incorporate historical data, interviews, or broaden the range of their personal essay by exploring the cultural or political issues hinted at in their personal essays.

If a student writes, in passing, about the first presidential candidate they were eligible to vote for, then they can include facts and figures around that particular election, as well as research other events that were current at that time, for example. As with other essay forms, students should find topics that are important to them.

• Utility Menu

English CSJM. Who Do You Think You Are: A Creative Nonfiction Workshop

Instructor: Saeed Jones Thursday, 12:00-2:45 pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students People don’t just happen. In this workshop-based class, students will explore the capacity of memoir and cultural criticism to illuminate their understanding of memory, connection, and self-making. This course is as invested in the craft of writing as it is in interrogating how storytelling functions within systems of power. Students will be asked to consider what the work is doing to us, and what we are using our own work to do to others. Classes will alternate between workshop discussions, in-class writing exercises and close readings of nonfiction by Lucille Clifton, Eula Biss, Carmen Maria Machado, Toni Morrison, Vivian Gornick, Hanif Abdurraqib, and Kiese Laymon among others.   Supplemental Application Information:  If you are interested in joining the course, please complete this application by August 12, 2024. A maximum of 12 students will be selected to join the course. The application requires a 2-3 page writing sample and a 250 work maximum reflection on why this course appeals to you. We will follow up with everyone who applies for the course by email once decisions are made. This course is also offered through the Harvard Medical School as MMH 709.

English CWNM. Nonfiction Writing for Magazines

Instructor: Maggie Doherty TBD | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students

This course will focus on the genres of nonfiction writing commonly published in magazines: the feature, the profile, the personal essay, and longform arts criticism. We will read and discuss examples of such pieces from magazines large (Harper’s, The New Yorker) and small (n+1, The Drift); our examples will be drawn from the last several years. We will discuss both the process of writing such pieces—research, reporting, drafting, editing—and the techniques required to write informative, engaging, elegant nonfiction. In addition to short writing exercises performed in class and outside of class, each student will write one long piece in the genre of their choosing over the course of the semester, workshopping the piece twice, at different stages of completion. Although some attention will be paid to pitching and placing work in magazines, the focus of the course will be on the writing process itself.

English CNYA. Creative Nonfiction Workshop: Young Adult Writing

Instructor:  Melissa Cundieff Thursday, 3:00-5:45pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site

In this workshop-based class, students will consider themes that intersect with the Young Adult genre: gender and sexuality, romantic and platonic relationships and love/heartbreak, family, divorce and parental relationships, disability, neurodivergence, drug use, the evolution/fracturing of childhood innocence, environmentalism, among others. Students will write true stories about their lived lives with these themes as well as intended audience (ages 12-18) specifically in mind. For visual artists, illustrating one’s work/essays is something that I invite but of course do not require. We will read work by Sarah Prager, Robin Ha, ND Stevenson, Laurie Hals Anderson, Dashka Slater,  and Jason Reynolds. Apply via Submittable  (deadline: 11:59pm EDT on Thursday, August 22) Supplemental Application Information:  Applications for this class should include a 2-3 page (double-spaced if prose, single-spaced if poetry) creating writing sample of any genre (nonfiction, fiction, poetry), or combination of genres. Additionally, I ask that students submit a 250-word reflection on their particular relationship with creative writing and why this course appeals to them. This class is open to students of all writing levels and experience.

English CMMU. Creative Nonfiction Workshop: Using Music

Instructor: Melissa Cundieff Tuesday, 12:00-2:45pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site

In this workshop-based class, students will think deeply about how music is often at the center of their experiences, may it be as a song, an album, an artist, their own relationship with an instrument, etc. This class will entail writing true stories about one's life in which the personal and music orbit and/or entangle each other. This will include some journalism and criticism, but above all it will ask you to describe how and why music matters to your lived life. We will read work by Hayao Miyazaki, Jia Tolentino, Kaveh Akbar, Oliver Sacks, Susan Sontag, Adrian Matejka, among many others, (as well as invite and talk with guest speaker(s)). This class is open to all levels. Apply via Submittable  (deadline: 11:59pm EDT on Thursday, August 22) Supplemental Application Information:  Applications for this class should include a 2-3 page (double-spaced if prose, single-spaced if poetry) creating writing sample of any genre (nonfiction, fiction, poetry), or combination of genres. Additionally, I ask that students submit a 250-word reflection on their particular relationship with creative writing and why this course appeals to them. This class is open to students of all writing levels and experience.

English CIHR. Reading and Writing the Personal Essay: Workshop

Instructor:  Michael Pollan Monday, 3:00-5:45 pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site

There are few literary forms quite as flexible as the personal essay. The word comes from the French verb essai, “to attempt,” hinting at the provisional or experimental mood of the genre. The conceit of the personal essay is that it captures the individual’s act of thinking on the fly, typically in response to a prompt or occasion. The form offers the rare freedom to combine any number of narrative tools, including memoir, reportage, history, political argument, anecdote, and reflection. In this writing workshop, we will read essays beginning with Montaigne, who more or less invented the form, and then on to a varied selection of his descendants, including George Orwell, E.B. White, James Baldwin, Susan Sontag, Joan Didion, David Foster Wallace and Rebecca Solnit. We will draft and revise essays of our own in a variety of lengths and types including one longer work of ambition. A central aim of the course will be to help you develop a voice on the page and learn how to deploy the first person—not merely for the purpose of self-expression but as a tool for telling a story, conducting an inquiry or pressing an argument.

Apply via Submittable  (deadline: 11:59pm EDT on Thursday, August 22)

Supplemental Application Information:  To apply, submit a brief sample of your writing in the first person along with a letter detailing your writing experience and reasons for wanting to take this course.

English CNFJ. Narrative Journalism

Instructor:  Darcy Frey Fall 2024: Thursday, 3:00-5:45 pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students. Course Site Spring 2025: TBD

In this hands-on writing workshop, we will study the art of narrative journalism in many different forms: Profile writing, investigative reportage, magazine features. How can a work of journalism be fashioned to tell a captivating story? How can the writer of nonfiction narratives employ the scene-by-scene construction usually found in fiction? How can facts become the building blocks of literature? Students will work on several short assignments to practice the nuts-and-bolts of reporting, then write a longer magazine feature to be workshopped in class and revised at the end of the term. We will take instruction and inspiration from the published work of literary journalists such as Joan Didion, John McPhee, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, and John Jeremiah Sullivan. This is a workshop-style class intended for undergraduate and graduate students at all levels of experience. No previous experience in English Department courses is required.

Apply via Submittable  (deadline: 11:59pm ET on Thursday, August 22)

Supplemental Application Information:   Please write a substantive letter of introduction describing who you are as writer at the moment and where you hope to take your writing; what experience you may have had with journalism or narrative nonfiction; what excites you about narrative journalism in particular; and what you consider to be your strengths and weaknesses as a writer. Additionally, please submit 3-5 pages of journalism or narrative nonfiction or, if you have not yet written much nonfiction, an equal number of pages of narrative fiction.

English CMFG. Past Selves and Future Ghosts

Instructor:  Melissa Cundieff Spring 2024: Please login to the course catalog at my.harvard.edu for meetings times & location Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site Spring 2025: TBD As memoirist and author Melissa Febos puts it: “The narrator is never you, and the sooner we can start thinking of ourselves on the page that way, the better for our work. That character on the page is just this shaving off of the person that was within a very particular context, intermingled with bits of perspective from all the time since — it’s a very specific little cocktail of pieces of the self and memory and art … it’s a very weird thing. And then it’s frozen in the pages.” With each essay and work of nonfiction we produce in this workshop-based class, the character we portray, the narrator we locate, is never stagnant, instead we are developing a persona, wrought from the experience of our vast selves and our vast experiences. To that end, in this course, you will use the tools and stylistic elements of creative nonfiction, namely fragmentation, narrative, scene, point of view, speculation, and research to remix and retell all aspects of your experience and selfhood in a multiplicity of ways. I will ask that you focus on a particular time period or connected events, and through the course of the semester, you will reimagine and reify these events using different modes and techniques as modeled in the published and various works we read. We will also read, in their entireties, Melissa Febos's  Body Work: The Radical Work of Personal Narrative,  as well as Hanif Abdurraqib’s  They   Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us , which will aid our discussions and help us to better understand the difference between persona(s) and the many versions of self that inhabit us. Supplemental Application Information:  Applications for this class should include a 2-3 page (double-spaced if prose, single-spaced if poetry) creating writing sample of any genre (nonfiction, fiction, poetry), or combination of genres. Additionally, I ask that students submit a 250-word reflection on their particular relationship with creative writing and why this course appeals to them. This class is open to students of all writing levels and experience.

English CMDR. Creative Nonfiction: Departure and Return: "Home" as Doorway to Difference and Identity

Instructor: Melissa Cundieff Please login to the course catalog at my.harvard.edu for meetings times & location Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site

In this workshop-based class, students will be asked to investigate something that directly or indirectly connects everyone: what it means to leave a place, or one's home, or one's land, and to return to it, willingly or unwillingly. This idea is inherently open-ended because physical spaces are, of course, not our only means of departure and/or return-- but also our politics, our genders, our relationships with power, and our very bodies. Revolution, too, surrounds us, on both larger and private scales, as does looking back on what once was, what caused that initial departure. Students will approach "home" as both a literal place and a figurative mindscape. We will read essays by Barbara Ehrenreich, Ocean Vuong, Natasha Sajé, Elena Passarello, Hanif Abdurraqib, Alice Wong, and Eric L. Muller, among others. Supplemental Application Information:  Applications for this class should include a 2-3 page (double-spaced if prose, single-spaced if poetry) creating writing sample of any genre (nonfiction, fiction, poetry), or combination of genres. Additionally, I ask that students submit a 250-word reflection on their particular relationship with creative writing and why this course appeals to them. This class is open to students of all writing levels and experience. Apply via Submittable  (deadline: 11:59pm ET on Saturday, November 4)

English CGOT. The Other

Instructor:  Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah Thursday, 12:00-2:45 pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site

In this class, we will consider how literary non-fiction articulates or imagines difference, disdain, conflict, and dislike. We will also discuss the more technical and stylistic elements present in strong non-fiction, like reflection, observation, retrospection, scene-setting, description, complexity, and strong characterization. As we read and write, we will put these theoretical concerns into practice and play by writing two or three profiles about people you do not like, a place you don’t care for, an idea you oppose, or an object whose value eludes you. Your writing might be about someone who haunts you without your permission or whatever else gets under your skin, but ideally, your subject makes you uncomfortable, troubles you, and confounds you. We will interrogate how writers earn their opinion. And while it might be strange to think of literature as often having political aims, it would be ignorant to imagine that it does not. Non-fiction forces us to extend our understanding of point of view not just to be how the story unfolds itself technically–immersive reporting, transparent eyeball, third person limited, or third person omniscient--but also to identify who is telling this story and why. Some examples of the writing that we will read are Guy Debord,  Lucille Clifton, C.L.R. James, Pascale Casanova, W.G. Sebald, Jayne Cortez, AbouMaliq Simone, Greg Tate, Annie Ernaux, Edward Said, Mark Twain, Jacqueline Rose, Toni Morrison, Julia Kristeva, and Ryszard Kapuscinski. Supplemental Application Information:   Please submit a brief letter explaining why you're interested to take this class. Apply via Submittable  (deadline: 11:59pm ET on Saturday, November 4)

English CMCC. Covid, Grief, and Afterimage

Instructor: Melissa Cundieff Wednesday, 3:00-5:45 pm | Location: Barker 269 Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site In this workshop-based course we will write about our personal lived experiences with loss and grief born from the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as how grief and grieving became a collective experience that is ongoing and persistent, like an afterimage or haunting. As part of our examination, we will consider intersections with other global, historical experiences and depictions of loss, including the murder of George Floyd and the AIDS epidemic. Readings will include essays by Leslie Jamison, Arundhati Roy, Susan Sontag, Eve Tuck and C. Ree, Matt Levin, and Alice Wong, among others. Apply via Submittable  (deadline: 11:59pm EDT on Saturday, August 26) Supplemental Application Information:  Applications for this class should include a 3-5 page (double-spaced if prose, single-spaced if poetry) creating writing sample of any genre (nonfiction, fiction, poetry), or combination of genres. Additionally, I ask that students submit a 250 word reflection on their particular relationship with creative writing and why this course appeals to them. This class is open to students of all writing levels and experience.

Instructor: Melissa Cundieff Wednesday, 12:00-2:45 pm | Location: Barker 316 Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site As memoirist and author Melissa Febos puts it: “The narrator is never you, and the sooner we can start thinking of ourselves on the page that way, the better for our work. That character on the page is just this shaving off of the person that was within a very particular context, intermingled with bits of perspective from all the time since — it’s a very specific little cocktail of pieces of the self and memory and art … it’s a very weird thing. And then it’s frozen in the pages.” With each essay and work of nonfiction we produce in this workshop-based class, the character we portray, the narrator we locate, is never stagnant, instead we are developing a persona, wrought from the experience of our vast selves and our vast experiences. To that end, in this course, you will use the tools and stylistic elements of creative nonfiction, namely fragmentation, narrative, scene, point of view, speculation, and research to remix and retell all aspects of your experience and selfhood in a multiplicity of ways. I will ask that you focus on a particular time period or connected events, and through the course of the semester, you will reimagine and reify these events using different modes and techniques as modeled in the published and various works we read. We will also read, in their entireties, Melissa Febos's  Body Work: The Radical Work of Personal Narrative,  as well as Hanif Abdurraqib’s  They   Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us , which will aid our discussions and help us to better understand the difference between persona(s) and the many versions of self that inhabit us. Apply via Submittable  (deadline: 11:59pm EDT on Saturday, August 26) Supplemental Application Information:  Applications for this class should include a 3-5 page (double-spaced if prose, single-spaced if poetry) creating writing sample of any genre (nonfiction, fiction, poetry), or combination of genres. Additionally, I ask that students submit a 250 word reflection on their particular relationship with creative writing and why this course appeals to them. This class is open to students of all writing levels and experience.

English CRGS. The Surrounds: Writing Interiority and Outsiderness

Instructor:  Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah Thursday, 12:00-2:45 pm | Location: Lamont 401 Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site

The essayist, the writer of non-fiction, has historically been an oracle of opinions that most often go unsaid. They do not traditionally reinforce a sense of insular collectivity, instead they often steer us towards a radical understanding of the moment that they write from. The best essayists unearth and organize messages from those most at the margins: the ignored, the exiled, the criminal, and the destitute. So, by writing about these people, the essayist is fated, most nobly or just as ignobly, to write about the ills and aftermaths of their nation’s worse actions. It is an obligation and also a very heavy burden.

In this class we will examine how the essay and many essayists have functioned as geographers of spaces that have long been forgotten. And we read a series of non-fiction pieces that trouble the question of interiority, belonging, the other, and outsiderness. And we will attempt to do a brief but comprehensive review of the essay as it functions as a barometer of the author’s times. This will be accomplished by reading the work of such writers as: Herodotus, William Hazlitt, Doris Lessing, Audre Lorde, Gay Talese, Binyavanga Wainaina, Jennifer Clement, V.S. Naipaul, Sei Shonagon, George Orwell, Ha Jin, Margo Jefferson, Simone White, and Joan Didion. This reading and discussion will inform our own writing practice as we write essays.

Everyone who is interested in this class should feel free to apply.

Supplemental Application Information:   Please submit a brief letter explaining why you're interested to take this class. Apply via Submittable  (deadline: 11:59pm EDT on Saturday, August 26)

English CNFD. Creative Nonfiction

Instructor: Maggie Doherty Tuesday, 12:00-2:45 pm | Location: Sever 205 Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site This course is an overview of the creative nonfiction genre and the many different types of writing that are included within it: memoir, criticism, nature writing, travel writing, and more. Our readings will be both historical and contemporary: writers will include Virginia Woolf, James Baldwin, Joan Didion, Audre Lorde, Hilton Als, and Carmen Maria Machado. During the first half of the semester, we will read two pieces closely; we will use our class discussions to analyze how these writers use pacing, character, voice, tone, and structure to tell their stories. Students will complete short, informal writing assignments during this part of the semester, based on the genre of work we’re discussing that week. During the second half of the semester, each student will draft and workshop a longer piece of creative nonfiction in the genre(s) of their choosing, which they will revise by the end of the semester. Students will be expected to provide detailed feedback on the work of their peers. This course is open to writers at all levels; no previous experience in creative writing is required. Apply via Submittable  (deadline: 11:59pm EDT on Saturday, August 26) Supplemental Application Information:  Please write a letter of introduction (1-2 pages) giving a sense of who you are, your writing experience, and your current goals for your writing. You may also include writers or nonfiction works that you admire, as well as any themes or genres you'd like to experiment with in the course. Please also include a 3-5-page writing sample, ideally of some kind of creative writing (nonfiction is preferred, but fiction would also be acceptable). If you don't have a creative sample, you may submit a sample of your academic writing.

English CACD. The Art of Criticism

Instructor: Maggie Doherty Wednesday, 12:00-2:45pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students Course Site

This course will consider critical writing about art–literary, visual, cinematic, musical, etc.—as an art in its own right. We will read and discuss criticism from a wide variety of publications, paying attention to the ways outlets and audience shape critical work. The majority of our readings will be from the last few years and will include pieces by Joan Acocella, Andrea Long Chu, Jason Farago, and Carina del Valle Schorske. Students will write several short writing assignments (500-1000 words), including a straight review, during the first half of the semester and share them with peers. During the second half of the semester, each student will write and workshop a longer piece of criticism about a work of art or an artist of their choosing. Students will be expected to read and provide detailed feedback on the work of their peers. Students will revise their longer pieces based on workshop feedback and submit them for the final assignment of the class. Apply via Submittable  (deadline: 11:59pm EDT on Thursday, August 22) Supplemental Application Information:  Please write a letter of introduction (1-2 pages) giving a sense of who you are, your writing experience, and your current goals for your writing. Please also describe your relationship to the art forms and/or genres you're interested in engaging in the course. You may also list any writers or publications whose criticism you enjoy reading. Please also include a 3-5-page writing sample of any kind of prose writing. This could be an academic paper or it could be creative fiction or nonfiction.

English CNFR. Creative Nonfiction: Workshop

Instructor: Darcy Frey Fall 2024: Wednesday, 3:00-5:45 pm | Location: TBD Enrollment: Limited to 12 students. Course Site Spring 2025: TBD

Whether it takes the form of literary journalism, essay, memoir, or environmental writing, creative nonfiction is a powerful genre that allows writers to break free from the constraints commonly associated with nonfiction prose and reach for the breadth of thought and feeling usually accomplished only in fiction: the narration of a vivid story, the probing of a complex character, the argument of an idea, or the evocation of a place. Students will work on several short assignments to hone their mastery of the craft, then write a longer piece that will be workshopped in class and revised at the end of the term. We will take instruction and inspiration from published authors such as Joan Didion, James Baldwin, Ariel Levy, Alexander Chee, and Virginia Woolf. This is a workshop-style class intended for undergraduate and graduate students at all levels of experience. No previous experience in English Department courses is required. Apply via Submittable  (deadline: 11:59pm ET on Thursday, August 22)

Supplemental Application Information:   Please write a substantive letter of introduction describing who you are as writer at the moment and where you hope to take your writing; what experience you may have had with creative/literary nonfiction; what excites you about nonfiction in particular; and what you consider to be your strengths and weaknesses as a writer. Additionally, please submit 3-5 pages of creative/literary nonfiction (essay, memoir, narrative journalism, etc, but NOT academic writing) or, if you have not yet written much nonfiction, an equal number of pages of narrative fiction.

• Fiction (21)
• Nonfiction (18)
• Playwriting (4)
• Poetry (26)
• Screenwriting (5)