This course studies the creative richness of the nonfiction literary narrative, focusing on close reading of nonfiction texts that employ language, imagery or striking conceptual strategies to achieve an expressive power usually associated with fiction. The class holds that many writers of literary nonfiction possess an imagination sparked most intensely by the real world and the writer’s place within it. We will study texts representing a variety of different perspectives, among them classics in the genre (Joan Didion, Bruce Chatwin, Michael Herr) and more recent works (Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers and texts by David Foster Wallace.) Students will also do writing of their own.