This course studies the creative richness of the nonfiction literary narrative, focusing on close reading of nonfiction texts that require significant investments of research, writing time, and/or reader attention. The class explores the language, strategies, and forms that writers of literary nonfiction employ for deep dives into the “real” world: through memoir, journalism, research, and genre hybridity. We will study texts representing a number of different perspectives, and students will do some writing of their own.

This course studies the creative richness of the nonfiction literary narrative, focusing on close reading of nonfiction texts that employ language, imagery and striking conceptual strategies to achieve an expressive power usually associated with fiction. The class holds that 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 number of different perspectives, and students will do some writing of their own.