Table of Contents

Part I: The Foundations of Creative Nonfiction

Chapter One: The Basics of Good Writing in Any Form
Scene Versus Exposition
Specificity and Detail
Developing Character
Dialogue
Point of View
Image and Metaphor
The Rhythm of Your Sentences
Try It
Suggestions for Further Reading

Chapter Two: The Particular Challenges of Creative Nonfiction
The "I" and The Eye: Framing Experience
The Autobiographical Act
The Pact with the Reader: Creating Trust
The Permutations of "Truth"
Cueing the Reader
Some Pitfalls to Avoid: "Revenge Prose" and "The Therapist's Couch."
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Suggestions for Further Reading

Part II: Unearthing Your Material

Chapter Three: The Body of Memory
The Earliest Memory
Metaphorical Memory
"Muscle Memory"
The Five Senses of Memory
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Suggestions for Further Reading

Chapter Four: Writing the Family
Situating Yourself in Relationship to Family
The Use of Form
The Writer as Biographer
The Obstacle Course
Permission to Speak
Bearing Witness
Try It
Suggestions for Further Reading

Chapter Five: "Taking Place": Writing the Physical World
Start Looking
Writing About Home
Setting Scenes: Place As Character
Writing About Nature
Writing About the Environment
Witnesses to our World
Travel Writing
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Chapter Six: Gathering the Threads of History
Our Historical, Universal Selves
The Ontological Layer
You Are A "Privileged Observer"
The Moose At The Window
The "When" In Addition to "What"
Try It
Suggestions for Further Reading

Chapter Seven: Writing the Arts
The Visual Arts
The Moving Image Arts
Music
Literature: The "Reading Narrative"
Try It
Suggestions for Further Reading

Chapter Eight: Writing the Larger World
Turning Outward: Finding Your Material Outside of the Self
Science
The Layperson's Approach
The Expert's Approach
Sports Writing
The Myriad Things Around Us
The Essay of Ideas
Try It
Suggestions for Further Readings

Part III: The Forms of Creative Nonfiction

Chapter Nine: The Personal Essay
The Personal Essay Tradition
The Ways Essays Work
Memoir
Literary or New Journalism
The Sketch or Portrait
The Persuasive Essay
Humor
Capacity of the Personal Essay
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Suggestions for Further Reading

Chapter Ten: The Lyric Essay
What is the Lyric Essay?
The Role of Intuition
Finding the "Container": Forms of the Lyric Essay
Flash Nonfiction
Collage
The Braided Essay
The "Hermit Crab" Essay
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Suggestions for Further Reading

Chapter Eleven: The Elements of Personal Reportage
Cultivating The Need To Know
Using Fact As Metaphor
Researching a Key Fact Or Detail
Working With Immersion
Developing Interview Skills
Developing Print Research Skills
Winnowing Down
Try It
Suggestions for Further Reading

Chapter Twelve: The Writing Process and Revision
The Drafting Process
Global Revision vs. Line Editing
Awareness of Audience
Three Quick Fixes for Stronger Prose
An Example of the Writing Process
Try It
Suggestions for Further Readings

Last Words

Part IV The Anthology
Preface to the Anthology

Atwood, Margaret, "Nine Beginnings"
Baker, Will, "My Children Explain the Big Issues"
Baldwin, James, "Notes of a Native Son"
Bausch, Richard, "So Long Ago"
Beard, JoAnn, "The Fourth State of Matter"
Berry, Wendell, "Enterance to the Woods"
Cooper, Bernard, "The Fine Art of Sighing"
Didion, Joan, "Goodbye To All That"
Dillard, Annie, "Total Eclipse"
Duncan, David James, "The Mickey Mantle Koan"
Fisher, M.F.K., "The Measure of My Powers" and "A Thing Shared"
Goldbarth, Albert, "After Yitzl"
Gordon, Mary, "Notes on Pierre Bonnard and My Mother's Ninetieth Birthday"
Hemley, Robin, "Reading History To My Mother"
Iyer, Pico, "Where Worlds Collide"
Kapil, Bhanu, "Three Voices"
Kingston, Maxine Hong, "No Name Woman"
LaMott, Anne, "Why I Don't Meditate"
Morabito, Fabio, "Screw" and "Sandpaper"
Mukerjee, Bharati, "A Four-Hundred Year Old Woman"
Price, Jennifer, "A Brief Natural History of the Pink Flamingo"
Rekdal, Paisley, "The Night My Mother Met Bruce Lee"
Sanders, Scott Russell, "Buckeye"
Sedaris, David, "The Drama Bug"
Selzer, Richard, "The Knife"
Simic, Charles, "The Necessity of Poetry" (or excerpted as "Three Fragments" from In Short)
Staples, Brent, "The Coroner's Photographs"
Sutin, Lawrence, from A Postcard Memoir
Walker, Alice, "Becoming What We're Called"
White, E.B., "Afternoon of An American Boy"
Williams, Terry Tempest, "The Clan of One-Breasted Women"
Woolf, Virginia, "The Death of The Moth"