Wake Up To Creative Nonfiction, NEA!
Recently, I recieved the following correspondence from Kathy Tarr, administrative director of the low residency creative writing program at the Univeristy of Alaska:
"Yesterday," writes Tarr, "I was reading NEA’s new report which came by mail to our office. The report ‘Reading on the Rise: A New Chapter in American Literacy’ was a welcome one, indeed! Americans are reading MORE, the NEA says. What writer wouldn’t be jumping up and down with this kind of news?
"But when I looked over their KEY FINDINGS on page 3, here’s what I found:
"’In this report, "literary" reading refers to the reading of any novels, short stories, poems, or plays in print or online…’
"But wait! Where is NONFICTION? What are essays and books of narrative nonfiction–chopped literary liver?"
Tarr believes that in the eyes of the NEA, there appears to be "a hierarchy of genres" and nonfiction is on the bottom, behind poetry, fiction and drama."
And she’s right. In fact, the NEA did not even include creative nonfiction as part of its creative writing fellowship program until 1985; meanwhile, they’d been giving money to poets and novelist since the 1960s!
Tarr says that the NEA claims that "FICTION is responsible for the new growth in adult literary readers. But, " she continues, "if the NEA had only asked their survey respondents if they’d read any good NARRATIVE NONFICTION lately, I think they would be surprised to discover that Americans are really reading at HIGHER rates than their latest report shows!"
Her comments are a wake-up call to the literary world. Nonfiction is the fastest growing genre in the publishing industry and in the academic writing community. Why is the NEA so far behind on this?
Sometimes it takes a good thing to catch on. We just have to stick together, keep writing, sharing, teaching, and eventually, people will see the jewels creative nonfiction has to offer.
It is quite a shame because what brought me into writing was reading the CNF science writers: Gould and Thomas, ect. I could not believe that one could write nonfiction that read like a “story”. I have been hooked ever since and feel it is not just “a” genre, but “the” genre!
Absolutely. Thanks for writing about this. Narrative nonfiction is hot with readers and responsible for bringing all literature to a higher level. The NEA needs to recognize as much!
I am thrilled to have this forum here, as in 1984, I was a student of Journalism, and ended up in the college of Interpersonal Communication. Wanted to write, but I quickly determined, that what I wanted to write was creative, and creativity doesn’t have a place in Journalism. I was fortunate to take a creative writing class at Ohio University, with Daniel Keyes, of Flowers For Algernon. It was there that I learned, “Show me, Don’t tell me.” But we were writing short stories.
20 years, 3 kids, two states and 5 pets later, I have lots of Life experience under my belt. I’ve listened to lots of NPR, read lots and lots of Nonfiction books, experienced anxiety, depression, and a minor heart attack, and I have something to say.
I’ve watched my children read books in high school that I didn’t read until college. I’ve pored over my daughter’s AP English Composition book, reading many of the varied compositions, learning a little along side her, while I read books on yoga, and Buddhism , Animal behavior, human behavior, memoir, and health. I’ve read books and podcasts and documentaries about Einstein, and God, about Robert Frost and Gandhi, and Thoreau.
My Children have read many more classics than I have. But My Book shelves are filled with more, “obscure” books- on Native American Totems, and The God Particle, and St. Francis of Assisi. But with all this truth, there emerges the inevitable–individual recycling–the distilling of the truth, when it passes through and simmers in the personal Psyche. And that distilled wisdom, via truth and personal experience, equals point of view–Intuition personified.
I am happy to finally know that what I write has a name, but am also quite confident that what I write, although categorized, wont feel like what anyone else has to say.