Journeys in Creative Nonfiction

Catalog description

This course focuses on exploring the genre of creative non-fiction and examining many of its forms including literary reportage, memoir, biography, travel writing, magazine writing, and the essay. Students read short and longer works by varied authors including Truman Capote (his classic, In Cold Blood, is considered to be a pioneering work of creative non-fiction), Joan Didion, David Sedaris, James Ellroy, Greil Marcus, Norman Mailer, and Art Spiegelman. The class explores patterns and trends in the development of the form as a literary genre, and the vanishing distinction between fiction and non-fiction. The class also examines how the elements of fiction - narrative, character development, scene setting, dialogue, poetic language, point of view, structure, etc. - are utilized in creative nonfiction.