Fourth Genre, The: Contemporary Writers of/on Creative Nonfiction

This best-selling anthology is a comprehensive and indispensable introduction to the way creative nonfiction is written today.

The Fourth Genre offers the most comprehensive, teachable, and current introduction available today to the cutting-edge, evolving genre of creative nonfiction. While acknowledging the literary impulse of nonfiction to be a fourth genre equivalent to poetry, fiction, and drama, this text focuses on subgenres of the nonfiction form, including memoir, nature writing, personal essays, literary journalism, cultural criticism, and travel writing.

This anthology was the first to draw on the common ground of the practicing writer and the practical scholar and to make the pedagogical connections between creative writing practice and composition theory, bridging some of the gaps between the teaching of composition, creative writing, and literature in English departments.

List of contents

Alternative Table of Contents: Forms and Processes of Creative Nonfiction 

 

Preface: Beginning the Conversation                                                                                               

 

Introduction: Creative Nonfiction, The Fourth Genre

 

Part 1. Writing Creative Nonfiction

 

Jo Ann Beard, “Out There”         

*Eula Biss and John Bresland, “Ode to Everything”            

Robin Black, “The Answer That Increasingly Appeals”      

*Michelle Bliss, “Fiction” 

Lisa Groen Braner, “Soundtrack”

*John Bresland, “Les Cruel Shoes”           

Shari Caudron, “Befriending Barbie”        

Steven Church, “I’m Just Getting to the Disturbing Part”    

Judith Ortiz Cofer, “Silent Dancing”         

*Edwidge Danticat, “A Little While”          

Meghan Daum, “On the Fringes of the Physical World”     

Matt Farwell, “Welcome to Afghanistan”              

*David Gessner, “Into the Gulf: A Journal–Day 10: Beyond the Oiled Pelican”         

Dagoberto Gilb, “Northeast Direct”                      

Vivian Gornick, “On the Bus”                  

Patricia Hampl, “Red Sky at Morning”                 

Jennifer Kahn, “Stripped for Parts”          

Jonathan Lethem, “13,1977, 21”             

Phillip Lopate, “Portrait of My Body”        

Nancy Lord, “I Met a Man Who Has Seen the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker

and This Is What He Told Me”    

Debra Marquart, “Some Things About That Day”  

*Maggie McKnight, “Mother’s Day”           

John McPhee, “The Search for Marvin Gardens”   

*Ander Monson, “Geas”  

Tom Montgomery-Fate, “In Plain Sight”   

Michele Morano, “Grammar Lessons: The Subjunctive Mood”        

*Lia Purpura, “Glaciology”           

Chet Raymo, “Celebrating Creation”        

Robert L. Root, Jr., “Knowing Where You’ve Been”           

*Shelley Salamensky, “Postcards from Birobidzhan”         

Scott Russell Sanders, “Cloud Crossing”

Mimi Schwartz, “My Father Always Said”

*Tracy Seeley, “An E-Book is Not a Book, In Which I Launch the Slow Book Movement”      

*Sherry Simpson, “Natural History, or What Happens When We’re Not Looking”      

Michael Steinberg, “Chin Music”

*Joni Tevis, “Everything But Your Wits”     

*Judith Thurman, “Spreading the Word”                

Kate Torgovnick, “How I Became a Bed-Maker”    

*Kathryn Winograd, “Bathing”

 

Part 2. Talking About Creative Nonfiction

 

Jocelyn Bartkevicius, “The Landscape of Nonfiction”         

Mary Clearman Blew, “The Art of Memoir”           

*John Bresland, “On the Origins of the Video Essay”         

*Roger Ebert, “I Think I’m Musing My Mind”          

Vivian Gornick, “A Narrator Leaps Past Journalism”          

Patricia Hampl, “Memory and Imagination”          

Steven Harvey, “The Art of Self”  

Sonya Huber, “How Do I Write”   

Tracy Kidder, “Courting the Approval of the Dead”             

Judith Kitchen, “Mending Wall”   

*Carl H. Klaus, “Days into Essays: A Self for All Seasons”

Brenda Miller, “ ‘Brenda Miller Has a Cold,’ or, How the Lyric Essay Happens”       

*Laura Miller, “How to Live: Grandfather of the Writing We Love to Hate”      

Robert L. Root, Jr., “Collage, Montage, Mosaic, Vignette, Episode, Segment”        

Peggy Shumaker, “Prose Poems, Paragraphs, Brief Lyric Nonfiction”        

Michael Steinberg, “Finding the Inner Story in Memoirs and Personal Essays”       

Marianna Torgovnick, “Experimental Critical Writing”        

*Kathryn Winograd, “(Note to Self): The Lyric Essay”         

 

Part 3. Composing Creative Nonfiction

 

*Abigail Moore Allerding, “Home” 

*Abigail Moore Allerding, “Unwrapping Surprise in the Personal Essay”       

Emily Chase, “Warping Time with Montaigne”      

Emily Chase, “Notes from a Journey toward ‘Warping Time’”         

*Valerie Due, “Lambing Midwife”  

*Valerie Due, “Gestating Memory: Capturing Narrative Details in ‘Lambing Midwife’”

Mary Elizabeth Pope, “Teacher Training”

Mary Elizabeth Pope, “Composing ‘Teacher Training’”      

Maureen Stanton, “Zion”            

Maureen Stanton, “On Writing ‘Zion’”      

 

Notes on Authors          

Credits                         

Index   

            

*New to this edition

Summary

The Fourth Genre offers the most comprehensive, teachable, and current introduction available today to the cutting-edge, evolving genre of creative nonfiction.  While acknowledging the literary impulse of nonfiction to be a fourth genre equivalent to poetry, fiction, and drama, this text focuses on subgenres of the nonfiction form, including memoir, nature writing, personal essays, literary journalism, cultural criticism, and travel writing.

 

This anthology was the first to draw on the common ground of the practicing writer and the practical scholar and to make the pedagogical connections between creative writing practice and composition theory, bridging some of the gaps between the teaching of composition, creative writing, and literature in English departments.

Product details

• Authors: Robert Root, Robert L. Root, Michael Steinberg, Michael J. Steinberg
• Publisher: Pearson Academic
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 01.02.2012
• EAN: 9780205172771
• ISBN: 978-0-205-17277-1
• No. of pages: 472
• Dimensions: 178 mm x 229 mm x 25 mm
• Weight: 522 g
• Series: Longman; Longman
• Subjects: Fiction > Poetry, drama; Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative linguistics