Donna doesn't have computer access at the moment and asked if I would post this link to the book she mentioned on our last call.
The Fourth Genre is the first teaching anthology to draw on the common ground both of the practicing writer and the practical scholar. It offers the most thorough, comprehensive, and teachable introduction to the cutting-edge and still evolving genre widely known as “creative nonfiction”. While focusing on the genre’s varying shapes and forms, it also highlights creative nonfiction’s literary qualities, as well as the singularities that identify it as an integral part of the literary spectrum that includes poetry, fiction, and drama. In an effort to bridge the gap between the teaching of composition, creative writing, and literature in English departments, The Fourth Genre points out the pedagogical connections between creative writing practice and composition theory. The selections represent the full range of contemporary creative nonfiction: personal narrative, essay, memoir, literary journalism, and personal cultural criticism.
Here's the link: http://www.rootwriting.com/the_fourth_genre__contemporary_writers_of_on_creative_nonfiction__6th_edition_53269.htm
Thanks, Donna!
Replies
I got my copy of the book yesterday and am very excited to begin. Here is a great quote at the very front of the book:
"Admirers of nailed-down definitions and tidy categories may not like to hear it, but all writers and readers are full-time imaginers, all prose is imaginative, and fiction and nonfiction are jut two anarchic shades of ink swirling around the same mysterious well. Those of us who would tell a story can only dip in our pens. We can never claim full certainty as to which shade of ink we're using." - David James Duncan