I have been researching Open Education (OE) textbooks and resources for teaching an upper-level essay/creative nonfiction class, and when starting to look for available texts, I imagined I might find something I could use that included:
- A section explaining the various kinds and styles of creative nonfiction (CN) writing (eg. personal, memoir, research-based, narrative journalism, etc.), as well as some basic “how to” information and elements of CN essays (such as elements from fiction and poetry writing), and how to be “truthful” in writing nonfiction in creative ways.
- Sample essays: student written and other essays that work as good models for students, in addition to more renowned or “polished” published essays.
- Writing exercises for starting, drafting, and revising essays.
I haven’t found any texts that include all of those pieces, but I have found many that do one or two of those things. Below, I’ve reviewed some of the resources I’ve found that could be used to teach personal and/or researched creative nonfiction in first-year composition, intro or upper level creative nonfiction courses, and potentially in other disciplinary, writing-intensive classes that encourage thinking and learning through writing. If you decide to use any of these in your own classes, it’s important to note that they may have different licenses determining parameters for sharing, remixing, adapting, and building upon the original work.
Introduction to Creative Writing
This intro to creative writing text is relatively comprehensive for teaching poetry and short fiction writing. It also includes an introductory section that helps students to reflect on their own writing processes, preferences, and drafting styles, as well as for dealing with anxiety and writer’s block. When I started looking for texts, I imagined finding something like this for teaching creative essays. And I wish this text included a section on essay writing, since I also teach that in my intro to creative writing classes. However, the poetry and fiction sections include many writing samples, TED talks and other videos, and organized lists of exercises that push students to write through various elements for each genre, and which build toward a comprehensive list of “skills” (eg. show vs tell; character, setting, and dialogue for fiction; and voice, imagery, and other devices in poetry). Each genre then culminates in drafts, revisions, final drafts, and a portfolio which includes writing in each genre and a 500-1000 word “evaluative essay” that addresses a list of points about the writer’s process, body of work, and more. Some of the information and exercises for these genres could easily be used for developing creative essays that incorporate elements of storytelling and poetic language, imagery, metaphor, and more for strong and dynamic writing.
I especially like the short letter to students at the beginning of the book in which the author, Linda Frances Lein, writes: “I like to think of writing as a journey–a trip or a vacation. Writing requires anticipation and planning before the journey begins, and during the process of drafting a story or poem, it unfolds as the first sight seen, the first photo captured, the first experience completed. Of course, the first experience of drafting isn’t the finished product, is it? Multiple revisions is like building a photo album or a slide show of the trip until it is a final manuscript to share with friends, family members, and other readers.”
Vanguard: Exercises For The Creative Writing Classroom
Vanguard is a text made entirely of writing exercises for teaching poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction, collected by graduate students. As the authors write in the introduction, “we have collected an arresting sample of classroom exercises by graduate students who not only teach across genres, but who themselves represent diverse regions and identities.” And they assert the text can be used in high school classes and through all levels of college, and across disciplines. For anyone using this book or trying new exercises for the first time, each exercise includes an overview and objectives, many quite expository and detailed, and some exercises include student examples.
There are 12 or so exercises for each genre, and I looked specifically at a few of those for creative nonfiction. In introducing this section, Jess Smith writes, “Creative nonfiction distinguishes itself from reporting, from hard news, and even from human-interest journalism, by virtue of being creative.… One must adhere to the truth, but also has the gift of exploring the nature of truth itself.” In my own teaching I often find exercises that I then interpret or revise for my particular purposes, and so, for example, when reading the description and exercise instructions for “Fizz or Foam: Learning to See the World We Live In, Write From” by Christie Collins, I was drawn to the the idea of “creative reading” in which students learn to engage actively with reading and “use reading as a tool to enhance and inspire their writing.” The exercise that follows helps students to pay close attention to their surroundings in various contexts, asking them to record details about a space or place that they imagine or remember, and then later to go to a place like they have described, where people might gather, and record details in person. They can then see differences between their imaginings and the “realities” of that place, and think about how detail can inform so much about perception, understanding, and more. Another exercise, “Putting in the Work,” by Katrina Prow, leads students through detailed instructions filled with examples to write about jobs they’ve had and how those have taught them skills, and about themselves. So many of my students hold part or full time jobs while also going to school, and so I am really drawn to this exercise as a way for students to bring the various parts of their lives together in writing.
Write or Left is an introductory creative writing text for all genres which includes a small section on creative nonfiction. The text also includes information about many kinds of fiction writing like sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and more. So it’s comprehensive in the sense of covering many types of writing, but does not go into great detail about them; including writing examples, sections are 5-10 pages long. It covers poetry and fiction by introducing basic elements and information about the genres and includes sample student writing and a few writing exercises. I like the way it shows how one can use elements of fiction to create plays and screenplays, for example, and how elements of fiction and poetry can be used in exercises to create essays. It seems useful for drawing on basic elements of poetry and fiction as tools in creative essay writing. Although there are a few exercises for writing essays, they don’t go into much detail and stick mainly to personal experience, memory, and observation, which means students may not be encouraged to add in more nuance and layers for more complex storytelling. It’s also in PDF format, which is a bit less interactive and a little harder to navigate than Pressbooks or OE texts with links to chapters, but the layout of this text is easy to access and read and can be downloaded and saved on your computer.
This text is a guide addressed to instructors for teaching autoethnography, which is a kind of personal essay written through a cultural context. As one reviewer writes, “the text provides readings, prompts, and assignments designed to get students to reflect on their lives in a cultural context. Group work, such as peer review, helps students understand their own lives and the lives of others through this broader cultural lens and facilitates cultural awareness and conversation.” It includes information about writing memory and character, spaces, events, and narration, as well as prompts for doing interviews and observation to broaden one’s understanding of their own cultural communities; this offers students ways to reflect on their personal narratives in relation to a larger community or society. The text is quite comprehensive and offers a number of chapters with exposition, examples, and prompts to give students writing practice even before introducing chapters that explain the autoethnography project assignment, focusing the project on a particular topic, and developing to bring personal reflection and other aspects of the larger project all together.
Let’s Read is a collection of readings across genres with a long list of nonfiction essays, some more academic, and some more creative. It includes “classic” fiction texts like those by Kate Chopin and Edgar Allen Poe, poetry by Emily Dickinson and others, and a variety of contemporary nonfiction, much of which is focused journalistically on contemporary topics and issues though some essays are also more narrative and creative. Topics include disinformation online and bias in social media, Juneteenth, science literacy, and more. And “How Film Transforms the Way We See the World” by filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy is a narrative reflection on the power of film using the example of creating a documentary about honor killings of women, and creating a traveling “mobile cinema” to share “films that opened up … minds to competing worldviews, encouraging children to build critical thinking so that they could ask questions.”
Creative Writing, Creative Process
This is an interesting text geared toward any kind of creative writing across genres, and is divided into sections that 1. introduce the idea of creating “raw material” as a writer, 2. offer many different kinds of writing exercises, and 3. include various revision strategies and practices, and 4. have a number of short chapters on proofreading. This could be useful for many kinds of writing classes, whether focused on single or multiple genres, and then supplemented with examples of essays or other writing. The introduction by the book’s author, Matthew Cheney, offers a sample organization of topics, from “shaping raw material” to using images, description, words, and more, and then moving to sentences, paragraphs, stanzas, and eventually to revision and a final portfolio assignment. The guidelines for the portfolio are included, and require students to create a web site, include drafts and revisions, and write an introduction/statement about the work and a 500 word reflection on the process of writing and revising. And then assessment includes a response to the students’ reflections and their processes, vs grading the “quality” of the final product. This is similar to how I teach my own creative writing classes; I want students to spend time experimenting, being creative, and being in the process. I give feedback and help them create stronger writing, and ask them to reflect on their reading and writing processes, so the grade is much more holistic than simply looking at the final products alone.
EmpoWORD: A Student-Centered Anthology and Handbook for College Writers
EmpoWORD is a very detailed and comprehensive text, more geared for a composition class. Author Shane Abrams offers a thoughtful introduction reflecting on the value of an engaged and transparent pedagogy focused on process. Abrams explains, “In order for you to claim the knowledge and skills you gain in a learning community, you need to see how you’re building it, be invested in why you’re doing certain work, and respond to feedback on your thinking and writing processes.” It begins with a section, broken into chapters, on “Description, Narration, and Reflection,” and personal narrative, which could be useful for any kind of essay writing. And it includes later sections on engaging with texts via summary, analysis, synthesis, and more, and then has a long section on argument and research. There are also sample essays by student and professional writers–which unfortunately are not individually listed in the Contents but included as a single “page” a reader has to scroll through. The appendices have strategies for engaged reading and revision, and I especially like the appendix on revision which asks students to really reflect on what that means, explaining, “revision isn’t just about polishing—it’s about seeing your piece from a new angle, with “fresh eyes.””
*Bonus texts
These are nice examples of collections of student writing that could be used as sample essays on a wide variety of subjects:
(magazine of undergrad student writing)
The GenEd Magazine (GEM) is an open-access publication space where the General Education English Program (GEEP) at Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) showcases the winners of the General Education Writing Awards (GEWA) each year. It’s a great example of a text that gathers together strong undergrad student writing.
(upper-level student essay writing)
This text presents selected essays from a creative nonfiction class taught by Dale Jacobs, instructor at the University of Windsor. There are only four essays, but they show strong, thoughtful, and polished student-written creative nonfiction. Although this text is available via Open Library, it is designated “all rights reserved,” protecting the authors’ works in their original form.
Featured photo by Jill Darling. This image is shared with a Creative Commons BY 4.0 license.