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?

Scott Whited, who teaches creative nonfiction at Colorado State University in Pueblo, recently contacted me to discuss the "role of persuasion" in creative nonfiction, saying:

Standard rhetorical essays usually take a position in the form of a Claim (Academic Argument, I think we call it in our freshman Comp classes here) and then support it with logos, pathos, and ethos. My sense is that this is not a primary–or possibly even legitimate–goal for CNF.

Any insight you can give will be, as always, much appreciated.

Here is what I told Scott:

I would say that almost all creative nonfiction has an objective that is persuasive. What is the point of writing an essay if we don’t want to impact on a reader–shed light, change minds, confirm ideas, whatever? The challenge in creative nonfiction is how to get to the moment of impact–the persuasive aspect. And that is through narrative. We show–we don’t tell–or at least we don’t tell too much. The idea is to observe or learn about the experiences of others and communicate all of that in scene and narrative. The stories we tell–the pictures we draw in prose–should be vivid and graphic enough for us to persuade without having to beat our readers over the head. This doesn’t mean that we can’t add to the pictures with a bit of reflection–though not too much. The story should make the difference. The story should reflect what we, or the people about whom we are writing, think.

Scott’s reply:

Would I be on the right track if I interpret your remarks as saying that CNF seeks to persuade through narrative, but stops short of outright advocacy?

Absolutely.

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For more information on persuasion in creative nonfiction, check out KEEP IT REAL: EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT RESEARCHING AND WRITING CREATIVE NONFICTION.

This is an article from Sunday’s Post-Gazette:
 
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SUNDAY FORUM: MAKING THE GRADE
 
When educators set no standards, they teach our future leaders to cut corners, says professor LEE GUTKIND
 

The grad student told me that she hadn’t been able to focus recently on the work assigned for my class and asked what she could do to improve her grade.

More work and better work, I told her — and fast. Three days remained before final projects were due. But she had other projects to which she was committed and little time remaining to fulfill my assignment, she said.

Then came the question I was hoping she would not ask: Was there any way she could get an A? She was used to getting As, she said. People expected her to get all As. And if she had been able to focus, she would have earned an A easily. Not getting an A would not jeopardize her teaching assistantship funding, but a B may cause others/colleagues to question her suitability for academic life.

Generally speaking, B is supposed to mean "good" while A is excellent/outstanding and C means average. In grad school, the meaning, technically, doesn’t change, but the stakes are higher. Grad students are supposedly the up-and-coming intellectual elite, accepted into the academy as the new generation of scholars. This is especially true in humanities-type departments and programs like the one in which I was teaching. So evidence of excellence was expected, not only by mentors, but by the students themselves.

The grading scale has also been skewed for undergraduates. Mostly, Ds and Fs punish lack of attendance or a total disregard for course assignments. If a student goes through the motions, Cs are relatively easy. But most undergrads eschew the C. Either they don’t believe that they should be considered average — or they realize that if they have future ambitions for grad school C is a kiss of death.

When I started teaching, I used to tell my undergraduate students, on the first day of class, that I would not hesitate to fail them if they did not do work in a thorough and conscientious manner. Now on the first day of class I stand up and declare: "I warn you. I am one of the few professors remaining who actually gives Cs." This invariably scares a few to drop the class.

I did not want to give this particular student with whom I was talking a C. I knew that she was a better student than her work indicated and that grad students need As — not just because people in academia are so judgmental, but also because grad students require constant ego gratification, since rewards in graduate study in humanities-area departments are so meager.

To make matters more complicated, this student was a member of the last class I would be teaching at a university in which I had been teaching for 30 years. What would it matter if I awarded her an A? It would be a gift — a break — for a young person coming of age in one of the worst recessions in our country’s history. A is just a letter — a judgment based on four months work.

But in the end I couldn’t get past the meaning of this action of leniency. Giving her an A would have forced me to give all the students in the class who had earned a B an A. And that would demean the efforts of students who had legitimately earned an A. The student may not have meant for me to do anything untoward, but I certainly could have cut her a break and no one would have been the wiser — maybe.

This year, the scandals engulfing colleges and universities in relation to the awarding of grades and graduate degrees have been in the news across the country. In the past six months, a dean, the provost and the president of West Virginia University and the dean of Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Public Policy and Management were forced to resign when it was discovered that both schools had inappropriately awarded graduate degrees to potential benefactors, including a governor’s daughter. At Virginia Commonwealth University, the former chief of police of Richmond was illegally awarded a bachelor’s degree.

But this low level of corruption has been going on under the radar for years in academic centers — not because most students lack morality, but because we encourage them into taking desperate and artificial measures by not having the courage and backbone to follow the evaluation standards we have established and condoned. Most of the time we are not teaching a work ethic or a quality ethic; it is more an evaluation ethic. A piece of paper or a meaningless symbol from the alphabet is often more important than the blood, sweat and tears gone into earning it.

What happened at WVU, CMU and VCU is only the tip of the iceberg — a precursor of the kind of morality and ethic instilled in future leaders. The lack of regard for rules and regulations in business circles that we now find so horrifying did not start in the banking and investment communities or even in the government. The seeds were planted in our high schools and fertilized in our universities.

Educators must lead the way to take responsibility for the morals and ethics of students by taking a deep look inside themselves and their own actions, drawing their own moral and ethical boundaries and honoring the mission with which they have been entrusted. It begins with honesty in grading — rewarding excellence and valuing achievement.

Harry Truman said, "The buck stops here." It is an old, overused line — but it is right.

Let’s be honest: the literary market is competitive. Here at Creative Nonfiction, for example, only 1% of the tens of thousands of submissions we’ve received over the years have found their way into print—pretty discouraging odds, especially to an emerging writer.

So how do you enter that elite 1%? What are editors looking for? And how can you get their attention?

Sometimes it all starts with the beginning.

In textbook journalism, the beginning of an article (often called the lede), covers the famous Five W’s–who, what, when, where and why (and sometimes how). But because the primary purpose in creative nonfiction is not so much to communicate quickly the basic information of a story as it is to draw readers in, the lede functions somewhat differently.

In creative nonfiction, the beginning of a story may not capture the Five W’s; often, some of the answers to those essential questions are purposely held back to enhance suspense and to allow the narrative to develop more organically. The lede also has a more complex function for the writer; it tells the writer where to take the reader and when to introduce ideas, themes and characters. The lede, in other words, leads. It gets the writer going and fuels momentum.

While revising, however, the writer usually has to return to the beginning of the piece and decide whether the first lede is still necessary. Often it is not; the first lede, writers often discover, was just a tool or triggering device that allowed the writer to get to the "real lead."



Dedicated to the art of crafting a better beginning, the latest issue of Creative Nonfiction, “First Lede, Real Lead,” offers readers a rare and instructive look into the editorial process.

We eliminated the original beginnings of three essays and started them a few paragraphs or pages later. Our goal was to make the beginnings more immediate, to eliminate some writerly throat-clearing, to help plunge readers into the heart of the story–the action, the theme, the substance–from the very beginning.

But did these changes, in fact, make the stories more effective? And what, if anything, was lost in the editing process?

You can read the essays in their edited form in the journal, and online you can see the pieces as they were originally submitted, with graphics that demonstrate not only what was removed during editing, but also what was moved further into the pieces and, in some cases, what was added.

You’ll be able to read author statements explaining how they really feel about what we did to their work. Plus, you can join the online discussion about the "first lede/real lead" process.

Follow this FIRST LEDE, REAL LEAD link to see the first essay and tell us what you think: Did our edits improve or destroy the three essays?

And don’t forget to check back frequently; we’ll be posting the next one soon!

The economy is tanking, as you know, and the budgets (and endowments) at colleges and universities are being hit hard. For example, one university writing program in particular had a faculty member retire, another denied tenure and a third resigned—all within the same year. This loss of staff forced the university to launch a search to replace two of the three positions. Then came the across-the-board job freeze experienced by most universities, and the search was canceled. Unfortunately, this is becoming a familiar scenario in writing programs across the country—although perhaps not as profound—so if you are a graduate student and find yourself in a program with staffing issues, here are the questions you should be asking yourself and your department administrators:

Who will be teaching the writing and readings courses you expect to take? Will there be professionals around to guide writing, editing, publication and job-hunting efforts? Do you really want to be guided by part-time faculty or colleagues pulled from literature and composition courses or by writing faculty with experience in other genres? Who will serve as your mentor and who will chair your manuscript committee?

Not to be misunderstood, there are perfectly qualified writers, editors and teachers in English Departments and writing programs, individuals able to fill in for missing faculty for a little while. But in the long run, remember that as an MFA student you are not paying big bucks in tuition or working for slave wages as teaching assistants to be taught by last-minute-replacement faculty for extended periods. MFA students almost always choose their programs based on the faculty they will have the opportunity to work with. Of course, sometimes professors resign or go on sabbatical, but departments are obliged to replace them with alacrity, when possible. Now we don’t know how long the job freezes will last, or how long it will take to fill the faculty positions, but one thing is clear: The people who will be most vulnerable—who stand to lose the most from these job freezes—are the students in the program.

The academic world is so incredibly hierarchical—and writing programs are no different. Graduate students in writing programs are vulnerable on so many different levels: academic (grading), administrative (financially support) and the creative work itself. This triple academic gauntlet can be so intimidating that MFA students don’t often speak out to complain or demand—even when issues as serious as inadequate staffing become prevalent.

But they should. MFA students should organize, approach program directors and department chairs, and insist that competent faculty—real writers—be recruited to mentor and guide them. (As the many successful low residency programs have demonstrated, good writers can be recruited to work with students individually on a one-on-one part time basis). Many writers have no interest in full-time tenure stream appointments. In addition, tuition should perhaps be reduced for grad students suffering from the job freeze. Teaching assistantships, fellowships, work-study opportunities should be extended to make up for the time students may not receive the guidance and mentorship originally promised by the program.

Remember, without you, there would be no program, no inexpensive (yet highly profitable) instructors to teach comp courses, no overqualified bodies to do scut work for senior faculty. Grad students are the heart and soul of English departments and writing programs, and thus have more power than they often realize. Speak out. If your writing program is not giving you what you need and what was promised, find another. Your years studying writing should be a rare and formative moment in your life. Protect your financial and emotional investment. Fight for your future with the same passion and commitment with which you write.

In my book, Creative Nonfiction: How to Live It and Write It, I caused a bit of controversy and annoyed some people when I said that writing nonfiction was more challenging and “more demanding, in many ways than poetry, fiction and playwriting because it invariably asks a writer to learn more and work more diligently to finish a project.” Twelve years later, I still believe this to be true, and I am not backing down.

I have heard poets and fiction writers say that when they want to make money they turn to nonfiction as an easy way to pay the bills and to buy time while they write the “important stuff,” meaning “Literature.”  (Notice the big, capital “L.”)  And I have no problem understanding that.

But when I talk about the challenge and demand of the nonfiction genre, I’m referring to “creative nonfiction”—not traditional nonfiction, as seen in most consumer-oriented magazines, which often requires a writer to report, only.  Very little heart and soul of the writer—the passion and intellectual component—is necessary in order to be a competent reporter.  The creative nonfiction writer, whether writing immersion journalism or memoir, must combine the skills of a psychologist, philosopher and dramatist with accurate reportage in order to achieve greatness in what we do.

For one thing, the poet, fiction writer or playwright may or may not experience or research what they are writing about—they may or may not have lived it—but the creative nonfiction writer, in one way or the other, must research and/or live the experiences they are writing or recreating.  Creative nonfiction is more demanding because of that absolutely crucial first step—the reality of the experience, which if it does not make the process more difficult, then it certainly makes it more complicated.  What we write has to be real.  It has to be true.  It has to have happened.  That is one big thing.  But then the writer has to figure out how to turn real life into Literature.  That’s another even bigger thing to be concerned with.

Poets say that their poems are true, and of course I believe that poets really do struggle to create their poems in a way to express some sort of truth.  Yet they have leeway, a great deal of flexibility that is often denied the nonfiction writer.  Also, the creative nonfiction writer cannot imagine or construct a perfect story like a novelist in order to accommodate characters (which are also created) and ideas.  We cannot envision incredibly interesting things that should be happening and make them happen.  The creative nonfiction writer must wait for life to reveal itself, and then be quick enough, smart enough and talented enough to capture, recreate and embellish the “magic moment” with integrity, representing the vision of our characters and, simultaneously, our own true feelings.

That magic moment I am talking about could be the homerun that John Updike writes about in his classic profile of the great Ted Williams’ last at bat in Fenway Park (“Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu”) or when James Baldwin writes in Notes of a Native Son about, when, as a young man he is denied service in a New Jersey diner because he is a Negro.  One piece is reportage and the other memoir, but they are both works of art—Literature with a capital L—that present all-encompassing demands on the writers to make their essays work and to preserve the authenticity of the experience.  That is what the best creative nonfiction is all about, and that is what we should expect of ourselves when we write and when we read the work of others.

Over the past few weeks, many of my colleagues learned that I was teaching my last semester at the University of Pittsburgh and taking another position at Arizona State University in Tempe, Az. Since then, the rumor has been spreading. People I run into on the street say, "I hear you’re leaving Pittsburgh." Or mutual friends and relatives say to one another, "Lee is leaving town."

Well, the rumors are only partly true. I resigned from the University of Pittsburgh’s English Department in order to take a dual appointment at ASU. I will be serving as Distinguished Writer in Residence at the Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes–where I will launch a narrative nonfiction book series, among other things–and as a Professor at the Hugh Downs School for Human Communication–where I will teach an MFA creative nonfiction workshop once a year, open to grad students, faculty and others interested in learning how to communicate through personal narrative. ASU is also providing generous support to my journal, Creative Nonfiction, and I will be affiliated with the prestigious Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing.

These are all things I have been wanting to do for a long time–helping scientists, engineers, nurses, lawyers, philosophers, etc. share what they know with a general audience, writing and editing new books, along with working with emerging writers, contributing to the growth of the genre through the journal and through my workshops–and ASU has made all of this possible.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean that I am leaving Pitt or Pittsburgh. You don’t leave a place where you have lived, worked and learned all your life.

Most people don’t know that I was an undergraduate at Pitt. My mentor, Montgomery Culver, helped champion the writing program at its very beginning. Endorsed and supported by Monty, I became the youngest member of our department and, as time passed, the only tenured full professor in the faculty of Arts and Sciences–and perhaps the entire university–without an advanced degree. Over the years, among other things, I helped start the creative writing program and design and build the creative nonfiction component. I served as co-founder and chairperson of the Student Publications Board, founded the journal, The Pennsylvania Review, started the Pitt Writers’ Conference and kept it going for ten years, and served as director of the writing program. So my roots at Pitt are deep with memory and eternal appreciation.

As to the city of Pittsburgh, even though I am moving on, I am not burning bridges. My family and many friends and countless former students are in Pittsburgh. The headquarters of Creative Nonfiction is here, as is my house in the Shadyside section where I have lived for thirty years, with its tiny carriage house, the last blacksmith shop in Shadyside, tucked behind it.

So I will be in Pittsburgh, but I will also be in Arizona, working with new colleagues who have been open, friendly, generous and responsive–providing exciting opportunities for achievement, collaboration and friendship.

So when people say, "Are you leaving Pittsburgh?" I say, Not exactly. I say that I am going to be teaching and working at ASU, but that I am not burning bridges. I say that I am anxious to maintain my Pitt connection, to forge links between ASU and Pitt, to support my former Pitt students and my upcoming ASU students, to promote cross-cultural experiences. I don’t believe the message in the title of Thomas Wolfe’s novel, You Can’t Go Home Again. I believe that you can integrate two or more homes into your life, that good friends and colleagues need not be separated by such categories as "old" and "new" and that I will become a more well-rounded and fulfilled person, writer, editor and teacher by embracing both my past and my future with passion, commitment and vigor.

After all, that’s what life is all about, isn’t it?

While The Best Creative Nonfiction, Volume 2, makes its way to subscribers and bookstores around the country, CNF has already begun to compile Volume 3–due out Summer 2009.

As you know, this annual publication collects the best fact-based narratives–mined from blogs, alternative papers, literary journals, and other out-of-the-way publications–and this year, we’ve decided to let you, the readers, help us in our search.

The details:

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Creative Nonfiction is seeking narrative blog posts to reprint in The Best Creative Nonfiction, Volume 3, edited by Lee Gutkind, forthcoming in August 2009 from W. W. Norton.

We’re looking for: Vibrant new voices with interesting, true stories to tell. Narrative, narrative, narrative. Posts that can stand alone, 2000 words max, from 2008. Something from your own blog, from a friend’s blog, from a stranger’s blog.

The small print: We will contact individual bloggers before publication; we pay a flat $50 fee for one-time reprint rights. Deadline: October 31, 2008.

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To nominate, click here.

Bonus: if we choose a blog you nominated, we’ll send you one of our nifty "Creative Nonfiction: You Can’t Make This Stuff Up!" mugs.

Become a part of the CNF editorial process and nominate today!

Because Creative Nonfiction is based in Pittsburgh, I like to think that our city is an epicenter of this style of writing. Its roots are here. So, as the city approaches its 250th anniversary, we’ve been hard at work on our Pittsburgh in Words project: a website, a reading and a publication.

The website went live about a month ago and features some of the best true stories ever written about the city and its people, by some very well-known writers—Annie Dillard, Stewart O’Nan and many others. CNF almost always publishes new work, and it is rare that we have the opportunity to reach back in time and rediscover lost literary treasures. And while CNF has always published some of the biggest names in the genre, it is also a central part of our mission to discover and develop new voices. Unlike most other magazines and journals, we coach and mentor emerging writers as they work, helping them develop their voice and awareness of literary structure. The Pittsburgh in Words publication (available soon in a limited run) will especially reflect this mission; featuring new work by seven writers with a connection to the city, some whose creative writing has never been published. Furthermore, these seven writers will read from their work on October 2 at the Pittsburgh in Words reading that kicks off the 2008 Creative Nonfiction Writers’ Conference. Assembling this project, combining emerging writers with those buried by time, has been an honor and a delight.

As a whole, Pittsburgh in Words—the publication and the Web site—demonstrates that a city can be more than the sum of the usual stories told about it. True, you will find steel mills here, and football and pierogies and rivers—but that’s just the beginning. And in this collection of compelling, electrifying, enlightening narrative nonfiction prose, you’ll also discover one of the city’s best-kept secrets: Pittsburgh is a place for writers, and it always has been.