tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23237685Sun, 07 Sep 2008 19:17:53 +0000<b>A Resource for Teachers of Creative Nonfiction</b>http://teach-essay.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.com (dinty_w)Blogger39125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23237685.post-3252580669264489778Fri, 05 Sep 2008 18:10:00 +00002008-09-05T11:34:34.699-07:00This one's widely available, o ye of little faith. I like the sixth chapter of Mark's gospel in the Bible for showing how ancient narrative structure is and especially for its elegant use of a flashback. The essay opens with Jesus preaching around Galilee and dispatching his disciples on mission work (he primes them to expect rejection—and says to react rather angrily, I must say, but we readers http://teach-essay.blogspot.com/2008/09/mark-chapter-six.htmlgilbert@ohio.edu (Richard Gilbert)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23237685.post-2381637902551799772Sun, 31 Aug 2008 22:14:00 +00002008-08-31T15:25:30.774-07:00nonfiction essayI came across Eudora Welty’s great short essay “The Little Store” in an old textbook and am dying to teach it. It’s available in a paperback collection, The Eye of the Story: Selected Essays and Reviews, which costs about $12, and is included in the Library of America’s Eudora Welty: Stories, Essays & Memoir. “The Little Store” takes us with Welty, as a child, to a neighborhood grocery store http://teach-essay.blogspot.com/2008/08/little-store-by-eudora-welty.htmlgilbert@ohio.edu (Richard Gilbert)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23237685.post-7315657069223406340Sun, 13 May 2007 14:07:00 +00002007-05-16T05:22:33.474-07:00nonfiction essay montaigneIf you are interested in contemporary essays that teach well in the nonfiction classroom, you've come to the right place, but if you really want to know about classic essays (Bacon, Montaigne, Fanny Burney), let me heartily recommend: QUOTIDIANA, The online compendium of public-domain essays. A great site, a great idea. Kudos to Patrick Madden for providing such a useful resource.http://teach-essay.blogspot.com/2007/05/quotidiana.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (dinty_w)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23237685.post-114948172832905110Mon, 05 Jun 2006 04:16:00 +00002006-06-04T21:28:48.340-07:00Poet and NEA Chairman Dana Gioia wrote an essay titled "A Spy in the House of Commerce," in which he argued for the aesthetic virtues that accrue to a person who plies his writing craft from inside the working world. But that was easy enough for Gioia to say: as the Vice President of a multinational corporation, his working world was not quite so arduous as the one described by Bill Roorbach in "http://teach-essay.blogspot.com/2006/06/shitdiggers-mudflats-and-worm-men-of.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Kyle Minor)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23237685.post-114948082196916736Mon, 05 Jun 2006 03:55:00 +00002006-06-04T21:15:32.460-07:00Henry James advised writers to plant the "stout stake of emotion" for the subsequent action to swirl against. For the memoirist, this surely requires an act of bravery. In "Sex and the Sickbed," Jennifer Glaser's subject is the persistence of sexual desire in the face of her first lover's leukemia, and the continuance of that desire after his death. When she writes of her grieving ". . . so I http://teach-essay.blogspot.com/2006/06/sex-and-sickbed-jennifer-glaser.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Kyle Minor)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23237685.post-114947931342654780Mon, 05 Jun 2006 03:47:00 +00002006-06-04T20:48:33.436-07:00Most personal essays are written in the first person, but in "What's Inside You, Brother?" Toure invents a first person narrator to describe a third- (and, for nearly half the essay, a second-) person Toure as he tries on a new persona, making himself over as a boxer not unlike Sonny Liston, well-acquainted with "the body English of the back alley, the backroom, the back corner of the prison's http://teach-essay.blogspot.com/2006/06/whats-inside-you-brother-toure.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Kyle Minor)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23237685.post-114487419282756152Wed, 12 Apr 2006 20:15:00 +00002006-04-12T13:36:32.843-07:00This is an essay that needs nothing but the writer to act as guide, taking readers from point to point via a staggering structure that moves back and forth from richly written research to the dramatic present: two men playing a best of seven match of Monopoly. "The Search for Marvin Gardens" appeals to students by way of topic because most have heard or have played Charles B. Darrow's infamous http://teach-essay.blogspot.com/2006/04/search-for-marvin-gardens-john-mcphee.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (I. Sukrungruang)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23237685.post-114295277799295054Tue, 21 Mar 2006 14:50:00 +00002006-03-22T07:34:15.896-08:00One of the best in terms of road essays. This essay (and essays of this sort) tend to provoke interesting discussion about the difference between a road essay and a travel essay, especially as Saner lines up in the first two sentences how they are different. (It's interesting to pair this essay with Tim Cahill's "This Teeming Ark" (Best American Travel Writing, 2000) to facilitate this kind of http://teach-essay.blogspot.com/2006/03/roads-motion-reg-saner.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Karen Babine)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23237685.post-114294985980068277Tue, 21 Mar 2006 14:02:00 +00002006-03-21T06:04:19.800-08:00This piece, written by Irish essayist and cartographer Tim Robinson, is a rich essay that works the relationship between land, language, history, and humans through the use of Irish placenames. His handling of history and location is a good point of discussion for students who are working with place essays as well as travel essays--and how to incorporate stories and anecdotes into a larger http://teach-essay.blogspot.com/2006/03/listening-to-landscape-tim-robinson.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Karen Babine)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23237685.post-114294937332601316Tue, 21 Mar 2006 13:54:00 +00002006-03-21T06:00:07.183-08:00Marquart’s essay, which skillfully combines migraines with agriculture with the sexual coming-of-age of a young girl, contains more than cues for a student about how to construct a multi-layered essay. This piece is divided into twenty sections--numerous for an essay, but this can teach students not to pay attention to certain boundaries as well as teaching the benefits of numbered sections. http://teach-essay.blogspot.com/2006/03/agricultural-mysticism-twenty.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Karen Babine)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23237685.post-114294927284636056Tue, 21 Mar 2006 13:51:00 +00002006-03-22T07:35:34.566-08:00In terms of language, there is no one better to learn from than Paul Gruchow. The language of “Bones” is stunningly gentle and gorgeous, with minute attention paid to each syllable, which contrasts strenuously with the cruelty of the content. For beginning essayists, this piece works well to teach that there is more to an essay than anecdote. His moments of epiphany are wonderful and much can http://teach-essay.blogspot.com/2006/03/bones-paul-gruchow.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Karen Babine)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23237685.post-114270794655606156Sat, 18 Mar 2006 18:52:00 +00002006-03-18T17:42:57.723-08:00Written by a man known first as a comedian, it is a serious essay whose humor serves to deepen rather than dissipate. (Some of Sedaris’s essays sacrifice truth for humor, but not this one – and this is another good point of discussion.) The piece is marked by economy in every way, as this wise and practiced essayist understands and knows how to use diction, image, metaphor, and other sometimes http://teach-essay.blogspot.com/2006/03/our-perfect-summer-david-sedaris.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrea Hollander Budy)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23237685.post-114270787905438292Sat, 18 Mar 2006 18:51:00 +00002006-03-18T16:42:04.183-08:00Purpura writes lyric essays about subjects from giving birth to witnessing an autopsy, and I recommend any of her pieces to show how the kind of leaps that take place in poetry can and should be imitated – nay, stolen! – in creative nonfiction. In this piece, the writer uses parallel structure to accommodate diverse and complicated sentiments. Time and place are especially well handled. (In herhttp://teach-essay.blogspot.com/2006/03/autopsy-report-lia-purpura.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrea Hollander Budy)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23237685.post-114270780673242413Sat, 18 Mar 2006 18:50:00 +00002006-03-18T16:44:07.263-08:00Using the alphabet as a structuring device, Moore satisfyingly examines the relationship between fathers and sons. The exploration is lots of fun for readers, as Moore continually surprises us with his choices of alphabetically listed section names (Carp, Divorce, Emperor Penguins, Father Knows Best) and the way he uses information as varied as this partial list suggests. Ultimately, Moore http://teach-essay.blogspot.com/2006/03/son-of-mr-green-jeans-dinty-w-moore.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrea Hollander Budy)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23237685.post-114270772362835802Sat, 18 Mar 2006 18:48:00 +00002006-03-18T17:40:39.456-08:00McClanahan, who has written two nonfiction writing guides as well as numerous award-winning essays, focuses here on the nature and meaning of home, as she simultaneously describes her move from Charlotte, North Carolina, to Manhattan, New York. Her prose is at once inspiring and distinctive. For example: “Last week, the footprints in our carpet grew bodies and names,” she writes to disclose http://teach-essay.blogspot.com/2006/03/goodbye-to-all-this-rebecca-mcclanahan.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrea Hollander Budy)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23237685.post-114270762551123460Sat, 18 Mar 2006 18:47:00 +00002006-03-18T17:43:17.600-08:00This is a wonderful and uplifting essay about an otherwise sad incident – uplifting because of the way the people involved react, and sad because it involves Martin’s beloved grandfather, whose failing eyesight causes him to make a crucial mistake. Written first as a discrete essay (in an issue of Creative Nonfiction), the piece was later revised to become part of Martin’s full-length memoir, http://teach-essay.blogspot.com/2006/03/macular-degeneration-gregory-martin.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrea Hollander Budy)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23237685.post-114270755364736441Sat, 18 Mar 2006 18:45:00 +00002006-03-18T17:38:20.123-08:00Adopted at birth, Homes tells the story of her initial and subsequent meetings with her birth parents. This long essay written by a masterful storyteller seamlessly interweaves scene, half-scene, summary, and reflection. Although she never states them outright, her complex feelings are nevertheless made palpable. How she accomplishes this is worth exploration. (In The New Yorker, December 20 &http://teach-essay.blogspot.com/2006/03/mistresss-daughter-am-homes.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrea Hollander Budy)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23237685.post-114270747604003829Sat, 18 Mar 2006 18:44:00 +00002006-03-18T17:41:54.963-08:00When I first read it in The New Yorker in 2002, I photocopied this piece and sent it to numerous friends, only a few of them writers. It later won a Best American Magazine Writing Award and was included in the 2003 edition of Best American Essays. Gopnik approaches his subject – the way busyness displaces meaningful interaction – by means of a narrative about his young daughter’s imaginary http://teach-essay.blogspot.com/2006/03/bumping-into-mr-ravioli-adam-gopnik.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrea Hollander Budy)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23237685.post-114270739527303521Sat, 18 Mar 2006 18:43:00 +00002006-03-18T17:44:35.970-08:00One of the most potent examples of the power of revelation through exclusion, D’Ambrosio’s heart-wrenching essay about love and abandonment is a model of the way one writer effectively uses organization and concision. Focusing on separate documents – and limiting himself to a discussion mainly of these (a poem written by his father just before he abandons the family, a letter from one of his http://teach-essay.blogspot.com/2006/03/documents-charles-dambrosio.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrea Hollander Budy)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23237685.post-114270718464468481Sat, 18 Mar 2006 18:39:00 +00002006-03-20T04:49:40.536-08:00Text and subtext work wonderfully well together in this essay about silence – “the right silence” – and the importance of music. What to relate, what to leave out: these are questions that challenge many writers. Corey’s brief essay demonstrates well how to meet such a challenge. (Collected in Judith Kitchen and Mary Paumier Jones, eds., In Short and published by W. W. Norton.)http://teach-essay.blogspot.com/2006/03/voice-for-lonely-stephen-corey.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrea Hollander Budy)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23237685.post-114270615808984033Sat, 18 Mar 2006 18:22:00 +00002006-03-20T04:48:41.206-08:00This biographical appreciation of a favorite professor simultaneously delivers information about the essayist’s own life during the time she was his student. “Oddly, I can’t remember whether he smoked in class,” Cherry writes, but what she does remember and the way she imparts this knowledge is in itself memorable. (Collected in In Short edited by Judith Kitchen and published by W. W. Norton.)http://teach-essay.blogspot.com/2006/03/note-about-allen-tate-kelly-cherry.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrea Hollander Budy)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23237685.post-114270607469100637Sat, 18 Mar 2006 18:21:00 +00002006-03-18T17:48:58.836-08:00In five numbered and diverse sections, some not directly about his own life, the author of fiction, biography, memoir, essays, poetry, and screenplays presents a list of reasons he became a writer. Valuable not only as an example of the power of the mosaic form, the piece demonstrates the ways the most subtle connections can be made among narratives when held together by, among other attributes,http://teach-essay.blogspot.com/2006/03/why-write-paul-auster.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrea Hollander Budy)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23237685.post-114264211895693374Sat, 18 Mar 2006 00:35:00 +00002006-03-18T13:25:31.580-08:00In the form of a review of a “lost” book, Auslander creates a personal essay using as a vehicle his three readings of Michaels’ short story collection at ages 14, 24, and 34. His remarks about Michaels’ prose – for example, “I was in love with his sadness” – mix appropriately with comments about his own life, and we learn much about both. The essay provides a good lesson in the creative use of http://teach-essay.blogspot.com/2006/03/third-look-on-rereading-leonard.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrea Hollander Budy)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23237685.post-114262645768717611Fri, 17 Mar 2006 19:42:00 +00002006-03-17T12:14:17.700-08:00"Water" starts off relatively simply--the joy of being in the water, the joy of swimming. "I am a fish," states the narrator. As this essay continues, however, the lens of this piece opens and suddenly the essay is not just about swimming. Stanton has a unique eye in observing the world, but what is a good teaching point, is how her observations always turns back on the narrator, that as she http://teach-essay.blogspot.com/2006/03/water-maureen-stanton.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (I. Sukrungruang)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23237685.post-114245291563765711Wed, 15 Mar 2006 20:01:00 +00002006-03-15T12:01:55.650-08:00We are all familiar with hurricanes from watching the coverage on television, so Gerard’s challenge is to relate what it was really like when Hurricane Fran slammed directly into his hometown of Wilmington, North Carolina. His unique narrative structure involves an implied question (what don’t they tell you?), repetition (whether, when, how hard, how long, and variations on the title), and shiftshttp://teach-essay.blogspot.com/2006/03/what-they-dont-tell-you-about.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (dinty_w)