I’ve just returned from teaching at the Midwest Writers Workshop in Muncie, Indiana. What a wonderful gathering of writers! While I was there, I also had the privilege of delivering the keynote address as well as the opportunity to visit the land of James Dean in Fairmount, Indiana. Some folks have been asking whether I…

I can’t claim to be an expert when it comes to writing about bygone eras, but I’ve set a novel (Quakertown) in 1920s Texas, and one (The Bright Forever) in 1972 southern Indiana. I’m guessing 1972, forty years in the rear view now, makes that novel an example of historical fiction. One difference, of course,…

I hope everyone’s summer is going along nicely. Sure has been hot and dry here in Ohio. I’ve been on the road a bit since the school year ended, teaching first at The Sun writing retreat in the deep woods of northwest Massachusetts and then at the Nebraska Summer Writers’ Conference in Lincoln, NE, a…

Now that the school year is done at Ohio State, I’ve hit the road to teach at some writing conferences. A week ago, I was in Rowe, MA, teaching at a retreat sponsored by The Sun Magazine. If you don’t know this amazing magazine, I hope you’ll check it out: http://www.thesunmagazine.org/ Personal, Political, Provocative. .…

Folks, we’ve reached the end of my ten-week MFA workshop in Creative Nonfiction, so this will be the last post from the trenches.What a glorious group of writers I had the privilege of sharing the table with on Tuesday afternoons. A big shout-out to each of them for the talents they brought to our workshop…

This week, using Suzanne Farrell Smith’s article, “The Inner Identity of Immersion Memoir,” from the December 2011 issue of The Writer’s Chronicle, we spent some time talking about this form of the genre. Perhaps the most well-known recent example is Robin Hemley’s memoir, Do-Over, in which he returns to relive his high school prom, a…

Much of our conversation yesterday sprang from a brief article by Sue William Silverman in which she discusses the importance of voice in creative nonfiction. Borrowing from William Blake, she defines the two major voices that writers use in memoirs and personal essays as The Song (or Voice) of Innocence, and The Song (or Voice)…

We had the pleasure yesterday of a visit from Stewart O’Nan, best known for novels such as Emily, Alone, Wish You Were Here, Speed Queen, Songs for the Missing, and the recently released, The Odds, but also the author of an interesting book of nonfiction, The Circus Fire, about the horrible blaze on July 5,…

I’m pleased to have my student, Marty Ross-Dolen, as a guest blogger this week. After Marty’s entry concerning research in creative nonfiction, I’ll add a writing exercise, but now, here’s Marty:   I would like to thank Lee for this opportunity to act as a guest contributor to his blog.  I offered to write this…

The poet and essayist, Sydney Lea, offered some thoughts on what he called “the lyrical essay” in an article that appeared in The Writer’s Chronicle in February, 1999. This was early on in the explosion of the lyric essay that has continued with the work of such writers as Ander Monson, John D’Agata, Jenny Boully,…