To Tell the Truth: Practice and Craft in Narrative Nonfiction

 This text engages with current conversations in the popular field of creative nonfiction, which ranges across memoir and biography, the

essay, and literary journalism.  Designed to meet the growing need resulting from a burgeoning interest in narrative nonfiction, To Tell the Truth emphasizes key elements common to all three major branches of the genre.

 

It assists creative nonfiction writers in developing a writing practice modeled to their unique needs, it addresses the practical tasks of applying elements of craft in the actual process of generating, shaping, developing, and revising material, and it includes contemporary models that represent the rich range and diversity of the genre.  A key feature of the text, one seldom found in books on the subject, is the inclusion of a writers on writing section in each chapter, providing personal essays that reveal writers' internal processes--that quirky quality we call creativity--bringing in writers' revelations about uniquely individual approaches to foiling the inner critic and breaking through writer's block.