Graduate of Yale and Columbia Journalism School, Ted Morgan recounts his service to the French army in his memoir, My Battle of Algiers (Smithsonian Books, 2005).
Editor’s Notes: April 2012
I thought about making an April Fool’s Day joke in our monthly email or hidden somewhere in the new issue, but I am terrible at making things up – that’s why I love nonfiction. It’s the brilliant stuff you CAN’T make up!
Writing Life: What if I never get that book deal? by Lisa Ahn
Most writers are seekers, restless. If we were satisfied with the here-and-now, the exactly-as-it-is, there would be no call to wander, to imagine otherwise. We pick at all the seams. We pry the edges of “what if?” We are good at doubt and wonder, at the possible and maybe.
Interview: Joshua Foer, author by Lori M. Myers
It’s this sort of “memory” – or lack of – that interested writer Joshua Foer in his award-winning book “Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything.”
Writing Life: The fact of the matter: Mythology as creative nonfiction by William Henderson
No matter your opinion about John D’Agata, recently under-fire for his slippery (some might say sloppy) handling of facts in his 2010 book, About a Mountain, the use of innovation (read: fudged facts) in nonfiction – which he argues is his right as the author, especially when helping foster a more artistic truth – created a genre, of sorts, situated between fiction and non, creative nonfiction, which even this magazine uses to define what it publishes every month.
Q & A with Dinty Moore — Interview by Lori M. Myers
When I first became a professional writer and began focusing on writing articles and essays, the name Dinty W. Moore was one name, in fact the only name, immediately associated with true blue creativity in the genre.
The Outsider by Fred Amram
Will I like this new teacher’s spelling lesson? Miss Christie begins, “The first word is austere.” My English language skills are almost as good as my classmates and my German accent is almost gone.
Third Waterfall by MT Cozzola
At the base of the third waterfall I am shaking, with cold now and with fear because I no longer trust my limbs. I’ve tried once already to climb it, but this waterfall is not just a little steeper than the last one.
Saint E’s by Ray Shea
Christmas was over and my grandmother was dying. I held her down while the respiratory therapist suctioned mucus from her throat. She opened her eyes—German steel bright as ever—long enough to see me
Review: The Family Silver: A Memoir of Depression and Inheritance by Sharon O’Brien
The Family Silver: A Memoir of Depression and Inheritance follows the author Sharon O’Brien on her quest to discover the familial roots of her depression.
