
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.”
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.

A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction. – Virginia Woolf — Women writers just love old Ginny. We quote her chestnut about the ‘room of one’s own’ at the drop of a pen. The quote isn’t limited to fiction, but writing in general. Usually, it’s centered around the “room” part – the need for a physical space
“My mother and I are sitting in the small dining room of her town-house; we are sitting at the table she’s had since I was a girl, but I am nearly fifty.” Thus begins Beth Alvarado’s memoir Anthropologies: A Family Memoir. This first sentence sets the tone and style of the book—clear pictures and underlying emotions presented in brevity and concise language that reads like poetry.