Creative nonfiction is a slippery new term developed in the US and imported into Canada. Some use it to describe literary nonfiction. In general, one might describe creative nonfiction as fact-based prose that literary writing strategies. This writing can trace its origins to New Journalism. It often has a strong narrative voice and can be innovative in form. This genre of writing includes the personal essay but there a range of subjects and texts that can be described by this umbrella term from science writing to documentary essays. Creative nonfiction as a category has been criticized as too open-ended to be useful.
For more information on creative nonfiction and to join the Creative Nonfiction Collective, an excellent Canadian organization of writers, visit here. Andreas Schroeder writes a very useful definition and exploration of creative nonfiction on CNFC’s website.
more to come….
the pomegranate 