Passing the torch of the creative nonfiction movement

“There are more than 200 MFA creative writing programs and three dozen PhD programs — not just in the U.S. but in Asia, New Zealand, Australia, Ireland the UK, and other countries. Nearly every week, creative nonfiction books appear on the bestseller lists of The New York Times and The Washington Post; they are featured and reviewed and excerpted in major magazines and on literary websites. Many newspapers today, once critical of creative nonfiction (and the New Journalism of the 1960s and 1970s), regularly solicit and publish personal essays for opinion and feature pages. News stories, once limited by the five Ws — who, what, when, where, why — are often written as dramatic narratives.”