About this item
With a title that suggests both the genre and the process of composing it, "Creating Nonfiction" is a collection of essays and interviews that aims to open readers and writers eyes to the formal possibilities of creative nonfiction. Included are memoirs, personal essays, literary journalism, graphic essays, and lyric essays, and the content is equally diverse, with topics ranging from childbirth to child labor, from dandelions to domestic violence. Whereas most anthologies leave readers to speculate about the evolution of each contribution, "Creating Nonfiction" provides companion interviews that offer insight into the inspiration, drafting, and revision process that produced the essays. Cheryl Strayed talks about how working as a reporter for her hometown newspaper influenced her later writings.
About the Author
Born and raised in the small town of Valley City, Ohio, Jen Hirt grew up as part of the fourth generation of family at Hirt's Greenhouse in Strongsville, Ohio. The events leading up to the demolition of the greenhouses are told in her first book, Under Glass: The Girl with a Thousand Christmas Trees, a memoir which won the Drake University Emerging Writer Prize for 2011. Her essay "Lores of Last Unicorns" won a 2011 Pushcart Prize after being published in The Gettysburg Review. Other essays and poems have appeared in over 40 literary journals. Her work has won grants from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Ohioana Library, and Bernheim Arboretum, where she was a writer-in-residence. She is an alum of Hiram College, Iowa State University, and the University of Idaho. Jen is an assistant professor at Penn State Harrisburg. She lives in midtown Harrisburg with the writer Paul Cockeram and their chocolate Labrador retriever, Olly.
