“Creative Honesty” was written in reference to the preface of the following book , an essay called “The Creative Non-Fiction Police.”
Works Cited
Gutkind, Lee. Keep it Real: Everything You Need to Know About Researching And Writing Creative Nonfiction. New York: W. W. Norton, 2008.
Further Reference
If my writing on Creative Nonfiction titillated your interest, here are some interesting books to read.
Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: I & Eye by Bich Minh Nguyen and Porter Shreve – this is the textbook we used during English 325- it has some quality examples of creative nonfiction and “craft essays”, essays about writing creative nonfiction.
Maus I: A Survivor’s Tale: My Father Bleeds History and Maus II: A Survivor’s Tale: And Here My Troubles Began by Art Spiegelman- chances are, you are not the child of Holocaust survivors and therefore, as a creative nonfiction writer have less source material. Still, this is an amazing piece of work, two of the best books about legacies of the Holocaust period. It may not be as informative about how to be a good creative nonfiction writer as the craft essays in the textbook above but it is an excellent example of creative nonfiction. And who knows, maybe the comic book structure and memorable characters will inspire you.
The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible by A.J Jacobs- this book provides an excellent, funny example of one branch of the creative nonfiction genre, the experiment essay.
Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy- this is a fearless piece of creative nonfiction and another example that is hard to imitate (did you have cancer as a child and lose a third of your jaw?) but utterly beautiful.