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The Best Creative Nonfiction, Volume 2
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About the Author

Lee Gutkind is the founder and editor of the literary journal Creative Nonfiction and a pioneer in the field of narrative nonfiction. Gutkind is also the editor of In Fact and Becoming a Doctor, the author of Almost Human, and has written books about baseball, health care, travel, and technology. A Distinguished Writer in Residence at Arizona State University, he lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Tempe, Arizona.

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Creative nonfiction is writing that is factually accurate and composed with attention to literary style and technique. Gutkind, editor of all three volumes of The Best Creative Nonfiction, describes creative nonfiction as a form originating in journalism that "allows writers to tell stories-confessions, explorations, apologies." In this third volume, Gutkind contends that all the "writers.collected here grapple with life" through "the careful use of words." The contributors explore a wide range of topics. For example, in "Literary Murder," Julianna Baggott describes the creation of a novel based on her family's history. In "Letter from a Japanese Crematorium," Marie Mutsuki Mockett explains the importance of preserving some bone during the cremation process and reveals her resistance to being labeled an outsider by her Japanese relatives. Finally, Dawnelle Wilkie presents a factual account of aborting a fetus in "What Comes Out." Verdict For the most part, the writing in this collection is powerful-the essays and blogs entertain, inform, and inspire. Followers of contemporary issues presented in compelling prose will devour.-Kathryn R. Bartelt, Univ. of Evansville Libs., IN Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.

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 accountsAwriters include a former stripper, a fatally ill man, a narcoleptic and a prosopagnosic (a woman who can't recognize faces)Abut a smattering of profiles include an insightful Poets & Writers piece by Daniel Nester on notoriously over-creative nonfiction writer James Frey. Happily, Gutkind reaches several steps beyond the literary journal sceneAblog excerpts turn up, and a piece on the secret language of hackers (or "h4ck3rs") comes from John McPhee's Princeton University creative nonfiction classAto 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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