The Best Creative Nonfiction, Vol. 1 by Lee Gutkind: Book Cover

    The Best Creative Nonfiction, Vol. 1 by Lee Gutkind (Editor)

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    (Paperback)

    • Publisher: Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
    • Pub. Date: July 2007
    • ISBN-13: 9780393330038
    • Sales Rank: 122,108
    • 320pp
     
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    Synopsis

    Narrative nonfiction at its cutting-edge best from writers at the cusp of recognition and fame.

    Publishers Weekly

    This anthology, an offshoot of the journal Creative Nonfiction, kicks off an annual series drawing together the best representatives of a fertile (if ill-defined) genre still struggling for recognition. In his introduction, Gutkind tries to clarify the subject, a seeming "contradiction in terms," but the pieces speak for themselves, blending precise research and astute observation with flavorful, fascinating narratives. Carol Smith, a reporter for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, contributes an account of "The Cipher in Room 214," a 1996 female suicide found in a downtown Seattle hotel who left behind no clues as to her identity; Eula Biss details powerfully her experience with chronic illness by riffing off the 0-10 scale on which her doctors ask her to rank her pain. Most pieces are first-person, memoir-style accounts-writers include a former stripper, a fatally ill man, a narcoleptic and a prosopagnosic (a woman who can't recognize faces)-but a smattering of profiles include an insightful Poets & Writerspiece by Daniel Nester on notoriously over-creative nonfiction writer James Frey. Happily, Gutkind reaches several steps beyond the literary journal scene-blog excerpts turn up, and a piece on the secret language of hackers (or "h4ck3rs") comes from John McPhee's Princeton University creative nonfiction class-to find a wide range of topics and styles; though some selections are stronger than others, the richness of the "real" makes the anthology work as a cohesive whole. (July)

    Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

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    Biography

    Lee Gutkind is the founder and editor of the literary journal Creative Nonfiction and a pioneer in the field of narrative nonfiction. Writer-in-residence at Arizona State University, Gutkind is also the editor of In Fact, the author of Almost Human, and has written books about baseball, health care, travel, and technology.

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