Existing creative nonfiction anthologies don't reflect the current cultural landscape. This anthology, featuring essays in forms both traditional and innovative, showcases the genre today – not how it was fifteen years ago when creative nonfiction seemed to include only memoir.
Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: An Anthology reveals how quickly the genre evolved into exciting subgenres. With essays by established and emerging writers, it mirrors the rich panoply of the current American experience.
Edited by creative writing professor and acclaimed author Debra Monroe, Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: An Anthology:
- Is demographically inclusive! It features writers from diverse racial, geographic, and socioeconomic backgrounds.
- Is aesthetically varied! It includes the traditional essay but also the lyric essay, the experimental essay, the essay as cultural analysis, and the researched essay.
- Teaches history, theory, and craft! The introductory chapter is widely researched yet concise, comprising history, theory, and craft principles – a careful synthesis of many teaching resources in a single chapter.
- Is interactive! Each selection includes introductory headnotes providing biographical information about the writer and pointing at one or two unique formal or thematic features, followed by writing prompts designed to move writers past fear of the blank page.
- Is easy to adopt! Instructors receive a one-of-a-kind manual that's thorough and insightful – reflecting the editor's years of teaching experience – to help them design dynamic syllabuses.
