The Truth of the Matter: Art and Craft in Creative Nonfiction

This introduction to creative nonfiction examines the building blocks of nonfiction prose one by one, illustrating how individual voice and narrative strategies delineate this literary form from conventional nonfiction. Individual chapters are devoted to detail and description, characterization and scene, distinctive voice, intimate point-of-view, and the various ways in which writers discover the significance or universality of their work.  Essays from contemporary nonfiction writers such as Henry Louis Gates, Norma Elia Cantú, Pico Iyer, Joan Didion, and others are integrated directly into the text to illustrate concepts.