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Memoir, Biography, Narrative Nonfiction—How Are They Different?

Posted by Lisa Dale Norton | Feb 1, 2019 | Writing Insights | 0 |

Here we are in February, the time of year when we throw ourselves back into writing the story of our life. The end of the year, with its deepening dark and circle of celebrations, distracts. But now, we begin again, clawing our way through the relentlessness of the information cycle to a quiet rhythm of shaping words, and asking fundamental questions: What is a memoir? How is it different from biography, and how are both related to that thing called narrative nonfiction?

Here’s my take on it:

Memoir is a story based on your life experience and what you have learned from it.

It is a winnowing of all that has happened into a tight view of a slim section of experience: the coming of age years; the head-spinning start of a career; early motherhood. But always, it is a winnowing of the vast, complicated arc of events that has constituted your life. Narrow, narrow, narrow. Find one series of events that linked together explores some vulnerable and pressing universality of life.

Biography is all about you, too—and all is the correct word. This is where you get to write about where you were born, and what went on during your young years, leaving home, setting out to make your way in the world, love, relationship, work, loss—the whole canvas.

See how biography is different from memoir?

Of course, we hope a biography will show us mistakes made and lessons learned—the vicissitudes that brought a woman to be who she is, pimples and all. We hope for some readers’ transformation as we witness the arc of that person’s life, but this is different from the expectations of the reader of memoir.

The reader of memoir dives in for the short version, the lens of the camera zooming in to show the close up of just the years from 6 to 18, or just that summer your husband died, or just the college years that led to a Rhodes Scholarship, or just the years when you, through sheer fortitude, worked your way out of poverty, of just those events that came together to make you the vocal activist you are today. Slim focus. And from that slim focus a nugget of wisdom.

Narrative nonfiction is a similar but slightly different beast.

This is a form where you might write about yourself and your experience a good deal, but you will also be teaching us something about the world. Maybe it’s the world of a dwindling tribe of the last subsistence whalers in the world (“The Last Whalers: Three Years in the Far Pacific with a Courageous Tribe and a Vanishing Way of Life” by Doug Bock Clark, recently published by Little, Brown and Company), so that the story ends up being about the writer’s experience getting the story, and about the nonfiction information itself.

We could say narrative nonfiction is the wedding of journalism and memoir, and while you may not be a journalist, you can do the same thing with your story by finding a topic that is central to your manuscript and making it an equal and parallel part of the story you write about yourself. Here’s a book where a writer did just that: “Don’t Make Me Pull Over: An Informal History of the Family Road Trip” (Simon & Schuster, 2018), which combined author Richard Ratay’s personal experiences with road trips, and the history of the American road trip from post-WWII to the 1970s.

See what I mean?

If you take the time to peruse the shelves of current nonfiction in your local book shop, you will see a lot of nonfiction with the author as player in the story. Why? Because we are a culture obsessed with the personal, the “I” of everything. Neither good nor bad, just ‘tis. And so, many contemporary nonfiction books give us the writer as a character and that character’s experience. But, they also give us information: the biologist who writes about his early days in the Galapagos, and Charles Darwin; the violinist who writes about becoming first chair of an orchestra, and the violin; the dog lover who writes about her dogs, and the industry of dog shows—two parallel stories that dip into and weave around each other giving us something fresh.

The name narrative nonfiction tells you everything you need to know: narrative, which means a story, and nonfiction, which refers to a topic from our world.

Can you find your project in this spectrum? Doing so now in February will make your writing year more productive, and make you more savvy about the marketplace.

About The Columnist

Lisa Dale Norton

Lisa Dale Norton is an author, developmental book editor, and a dynamic public speaker. She is passionate about layered writing structures in narrative nonfiction that reflect the complexity of life experience, and about the transformative power of writing a memoir. She is a gifted teacher, clear communicator, and a pro at creating an environment were learning can happen. Lisa wrote America’s go-to memoir writing guide, Shimmering Images: A Handy Little Guide to Writing Memoir (Macmillan), and the literary nonfiction story Hawk Flies Above: Journey to the Heart of the Sandhills (Picador USA), which won comparisons to the writing of Annie Dillard. https://lisadalenorton.com/

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Definition of Biography

A biography is the non- fiction , written history or account of a person’s life. Biographies are intended to give an objective portrayal of a person, written in the third person. Biographers collect information from the subject (if he/she is available), acquaintances of the subject, or in researching other sources such as reference material, experts, records, diaries, interviews, etc. Most biographers intend to present the life story of a person and establish the context of their story for the reader, whether in terms of history and/or the present day. In turn, the reader can be reasonably assured that the information presented about the biographical subject is as true and authentic as possible.

Biographies can be written about a person at any time, no matter if they are living or dead. However, there are limitations to biography as a literary device. Even if the subject is involved in the biographical process, the biographer is restricted in terms of access to the subject’s thoughts or feelings.

Biographical works typically include details of significant events that shape the life of the subject as well as information about their childhood, education, career, and relationships. Occasionally, a biography is made into another form of art such as a film or dramatic production. The musical production of “Hamilton” is an excellent example of a biographical work that has been turned into one of the most popular musical productions in Broadway history.

Common Examples of Biographical Subjects

Most people assume that the subject of a biography must be a person who is famous in some way. However, that’s not always the case. In general, biographical subjects tend to be interesting people who have pioneered something in their field of expertise or done something extraordinary for humanity. In addition, biographical subjects can be people who have experienced something unusual or heartbreaking, committed terrible acts, or who are especially gifted and/or talented.

As a literary device, biography is important because it allows readers to learn about someone’s story and history. This can be enlightening, inspiring, and meaningful in creating connections. Here are some common examples of biographical subjects:

political leaders
entrepreneurs
historical figures
serial killers
notorious people
political activists
adventurers/explorers
religious leaders
military leaders
cultural figures

Famous Examples of Biographical Works

The readership for biography tends to be those who enjoy learning about a certain person’s life or overall field related to the person. In addition, some readers enjoy the literary form of biography independent of the subject. Some biographical works become well-known due to either the person’s story or the way the work is written, gaining a readership of people who may not otherwise choose to read biography or are unfamiliar with its form.

Here are some famous examples of biographical works that are familiar to many readers outside of biography fans:

Alexander Hamilton (Ron Chernow)
Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder (Caroline Fraser)
Steve Jobs (Walter Isaacson)
Churchill: A Life (Martin Gilbert)
The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary (Simon Winchester)
A Beautiful Mind (Sylvia Nasar)
The Black Rose (Tananarive Due)
John Adams (David McCullough)
Into the Wild ( Jon Krakauer )
John Brown (W.E.B. Du Bois)
Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo (Hayden Herrera)
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Rebecca Skloot)
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (Doris Kearns Goodwin)
Shirley Jackson : A Rather Haunted Life ( Ruth Franklin)
the stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit (Michael Finkel)

Difference Between Biography, Autobiography, and Memoir

Biography, autobiography , and memoir are the three main forms used to tell the story of a person’s life. Though there are similarities between these forms, they have distinct differences in terms of the writing, style , and purpose.

A biography is an informational narrative and account of the life history of an individual person, written by someone who is not the subject of the biography. An autobiography is the story of an individual’s life, written by that individual. In general, an autobiography is presented chronologically with a focus on key events in the person’s life. Since the writer is the subject of an autobiography, it’s written in the first person and considered more subjective than objective, like a biography. In addition, autobiographies are often written late in the person’s life to present their life experiences, challenges, achievements, viewpoints, etc., across time.

Memoir refers to a written collection of a person’s significant memories, written by that person. Memoir doesn’t generally include biographical information or chronological events unless it’s relevant to the story being presented. The purpose of memoir is reflection and an intention to share a meaningful story as a means of creating an emotional connection with the reader. Memoirs are often presented in a narrative style that is both entertaining and thought-provoking.

Examples of Biography in Literature

An important subset of biography is literary biography. A literary biography applies biographical study and form to the lives of artists and writers. This poses some complications for writers of literary biographies in that they must balance the representation of the biographical subject, the artist or writer, as well as aspects of the subject’s literary works. This balance can be difficult to achieve in terms of judicious interpretation of biographical elements within an author’s literary work and consideration of the separate spheres of the artist and their art.

Literary biographies of artists and writers are among some of the most interesting biographical works. These biographies can also be very influential for readers, not only in terms of understanding the artist or writer’s personal story but the context of their work or literature as well. Here are some examples of well-known literary biographies:

Example 1: Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay (Nancy Milford)

One of the first things Vincent explained to Norma was that there was a certain freedom of language in the Village that mustn’t shock her. It wasn’t vulgar. ‘So we sat darning socks on Waverly Place and practiced the use of profanity as we stitched. Needle in, . Needle out, piss. Needle in, . Needle out, c. Until we were easy with the words.’

This passage reflects the way in which Milford is able to characterize St. Vincent Millay as a person interacting with her sister. Even avid readers of a writer’s work are often unaware of the artist’s private and personal natures, separate from their literature and art. Milford reflects the balance required on the part of a literary biographer of telling the writer’s life story without undermining or interfering with the meaning and understanding of the literature produced by the writer. Though biographical information can provide some influence and context for a writer’s literary subjects, style, and choices , there is a distinction between the fictional world created by a writer and the writer’s “real” world. However, a literary biographer can illuminate the writer’s story so that the reader of both the biography and the biographical subject’s literature finds greater meaning and significance.

Example 2: The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens (Claire Tomalin)

The season of domestic goodwill and festivity must have posed a problem to all good Victorian family men with more than one family to take care of, particularly when there were two lots of children to receive the demonstrations of paternal love.

Tomalin’s literary biography of Charles Dickens reveals the writer’s extramarital relationship with a woman named Nelly Ternan. Tomalin presents the complications that resulted for Dickens from this relationship in terms of his personal and family life as well as his professional writing and literary work. Revealing information such as an extramarital relationship can influence the way a reader may feel about the subject as a person, and in the case of literary biography it can influence the way readers feel about the subject’s literature as well. Artists and writers who are beloved , such as Charles Dickens, are often idealized by their devoted readers and society itself. However, as Tomalin’s biography of Dickens indicates, artists and writers are complicated and as subject to human failings as anyone else.

Example 3: Virginia Woolf (Hermione Lee)

‘A self that goes on changing is a self that goes on living’: so too with the biography of that self. And just as lives don’t stay still, so life-writing can’t be fixed and finalised. Our ideas are shifting about what can be said, our knowledge of human character is changing. The biographer has to pioneer, going ‘ahead of the rest of us, like the miner’s canary, testing the atmosphere , detecting falsity, unreality, and the presence of obsolete conventions’. So, ‘There are some stories which have to be retold by each generation’. She is talking about the story of Shelley, but she could be talking about her own life-story.

In this passage, Lee is able to demonstrate what her biographical subject, Virginia Woolf, felt about biography and a person telling their own or another person’s story. Literary biographies of well-known writers can be especially difficult to navigate in that both the author and biographical subject are writers, but completely separate and different people. As referenced in this passage by Lee, Woolf was aware of the subtleties and fluidity present in a person’s life which can be difficult to judiciously and effectively relay to a reader on the part of a biographer. In addition, Woolf offers insight into the fact that biographers must make choices in terms of what information is presented to the reader and the context in which it is offered, making them a “miner’s canary” as to how history will view and remember the biographical subject.

Author, Editor of Memoir & Narrative Nonfiction

Memoir, Biography, Narrative Nonfiction—What Are They?

Here we are in February, the time of year when we throw ourselves back into writing and asking fundamental questions: What is a memoir? How is it different from biography, and how are both related to that thing called narrative nonfiction?

Memoir is a story based on your life experience and what you have learned from it. It is a winnowing of all that has happened into a tight view of a slim section of experience : the coming of age years; the head-spinning start of a career; early motherhood. But always, it is a winnowing of the vast, complicated arc of events that has constituted your life. Narrow, narrow, narrow. Find one series of events that linked together explores some vulnerable and pressing universality of life.

See how biography is different from memoir?

Of course we hope a biography will show us mistakes made and lessons learned—the vicissitudes that brought a woman to be who she is, pimples and all. We hope for some readers’ transformation as we witness the arc of that person’s life, but this is different from the expectations of the reader of memoir.

Narrative nonfiction is a similar but slightly different beast. This is a form where you might write about yourself and your experience a good deal, but you will also be teaching us something about the world. Maybe it’s the world of a dwindling tribe of the last subsistence whalers in the world (“The Last Whalers: Three Years in the Far Pacific with a Courageous Tribe and a Vanishing Way of Life” by Doug Bock Clark, recently published by Little, Brown and Company), so that the story ends up being about the writer’s experience getting the story, and about the nonfiction information itself.

We could say narrative nonfiction is the wedding of journalism and memoir , and while you may not be a journalist, you can do the same thing with your story by finding a topic that is central to your manuscript and making it an equal and parallel part of the story you write about yourself. Here’s a book where a writer did just that: “Don’t Make Me Pull Over: An Informal History of the Family Road Trip” (Simon & Schuster, 2018), which combined author Richard Ratay’s personal experiences with road trips, and the history of the American road trip from post-WWII to the 1970s.

See what I mean?

If you take the time to peruse the shelves of current nonfiction in your local book shop, you will see a lot of nonfiction with the author as player in the story. Why? Because we are a culture obsessed with the personal, the “I” of everything. Neither good, nor bad, just ‘tis. And so, many contemporary nonfiction books give us the writer as a character and that character’s experience. But, they also give us information : the biologist who writes about his early days in the Galapagos, and Charles Darwin; the violinist who writes about becoming first chair of an orchestra, and the violin; the dog lover who writes about her dogs, and the industry of dog shows—two parallel stories that dip into and weave around each other giving us something fresh.

The name narrative nonfiction tells you everything you need to know: narrative, which means a story, and nonfiction, which refers to a topic from our world.

Can you find your project in this spectrum? Doing so now in February will make your writing year more productive , and make you more savvy about the marketplace.

Should Your Memoir Have the Shape of a Novel?

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Is It Okay to Begin Writing a Memoir and then Turn It Into a Novel?

Sometimes the story we begin writing outgrows the boundaries of memoir and branches away from the task of reconstructing real people and lived events and leaps imaginatively into invention—first, invention of little this’s and that’s, and then (oops!) into the invention of bigger this’s and […]

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Literary Terms: Narrative Nonfiction, Autobiography, and Memoir

There’s something special about excellent nonfiction, but the water gets muddy when you try to label works under its large umbrella. Today, as part of our literary terms series, we examine three methods of telling a true story as we explore the similarities and differences among narrative nonfiction, autobiography, and memoir. (In past literary terms posts we have discussed the difference between terror and horror ; apocalyptic, dystopian, and post-apocalyptic fiction; and legend, myth, and fairy tale . Take a look!)

Narrative Nonfiction

Considered a fairly new genre, narrative nonfiction (also called creative nonfiction) uses literary styles and techniques to write factually accurate narratives. Some recognizable narrative nonfiction titles include: In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, Into Thin Air by John Krakauer, and The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe. What is apparent in each of these titles—and in narrative nonfiction in general—are the features of fiction, such as scenes and plot, adapted for the purpose of journalism to create a compelling and readable story. Clearly, there are no thesis statements allowed. According to literary critic Barbara Lounsberry, there are four recognizable elements to narrative nonfiction: the topics and events must exist in the real world (not in the mind of the author), there must be exhaustive research, all scenes must be in context, and it should all be presented in a literary style. Narrative nonfiction is therefore a broad category, lacking hard rules on subject matter or style. And to make things difficult, both autobiography and memoir fall under its large umbrella.

Autobiography and Memoir

Jokingly coined in 1797 by William Taylor as an absurdly precise combination, the term “autobiography” is composed of the Greek words for self , life, and to write. True to Taylor’s description, an autobiography is an account of a person’s life written by that person. Although they have gone by different names in the past, autobiographies have been around for literal ages—from Augustine to Rousseau. Autobiography can be difficult to differentiate from memoir (it is interesting to note that Amazon puts them in the same category), and often the terms are used interchangeably but there are a few distinct differences.

Autobiographies tend to chronicle the writer’s entire life, or a vast majority, whereas a memoir’s focus can rest on a smaller set of years or single event. In an article by The Guardian, Ian Jack refers to the autobiography as a record of accomplishment, one that can be written (or written by a ghostwriter) by any kind of person, whereas memoir has a more literary style. He writes: “The memoir’s ambition is to be interesting in itself, as a novel might be, about intimate, personal experience. It often aspires to be thought of as “literary”, and for that reason borrows many of literature’s tricks—the tricks of the novel, of fiction—because it wants to do more than record the past; it wants to re-create it.” Elie Wiesel’s Night is an autobiographical account of his own experiences in the concentration camps of World War II, but it is classified as a memoir because it covers a very specific time in his life. Henry David Thoreau’s Walden is also a memoir, as it covers only two years of his life and dwells on very specific memories. Because both autobiography and memoir are generated from the memories and personal experiences of the writer, by nature they are more subjective and therefore naturally draw questions regarding factual accuracy. As a result, there is an ongoing debate about how closely the two forms should be classified, or given distance from, the term nonfiction .

Do you have a favorite piece of narrative nonfiction or a way you clarify between the three categories? If so, share in the comments!

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What is Narrative Nonfiction?

Narrative nonfiction infuses true-life accounts with the storytelling techniques of your favorite fictional narratives. From mind-boggling scientific odysseys and eye-opening historical reports to nerve-jangling true crime investigations, the genre has something for everyone. But what is narrative nonfiction, and how is it different from other literary genres? Buckle up as we journey into the history and controversies of narrative nonfiction, where we’ll discover some captivating reads that are anything but dull.

What Is Narrative Nonfiction?

Sometimes referred to as literary nonfiction or creative nonfiction, narrative nonfiction draws on the literary methods of fiction writing to present well-researched information. It’s a flexible term that can be applied to various works and styles, including memoir , history , investigative journalism , current affairs , and scientific accounts. What sets the genre apart from more traditional nonfiction is that narrative nonfiction aims to entertain as much as inform by building a compelling story around its central subject.

As such, some of the most popular narrative nonfiction books center on groundbreaking discoveries, ripped-from-the-headlines investigations, or major historical events. Recent examples include Paul Kix’s You Have to Be Prepared to Die Before You Can Begin to Live , which chronicles a crucial moment in the Civil Rights Movement, and Elon Green’s Edgar Award–winning true crime book Last Call , which examines a harrowing murder case from 1980s and ’90s New York. Narrative nonfiction also excels at telling quieter human stories that connect to deep social issues. One such example is Brothers on Three by journalist Abe Streep. The award-winning nonfiction book follows a group of young basketball players from Montana’s Flathead Indian Reservation as they embark on their final year of high school. What begins as a seemingly straightforward sports book about a championship season soon blossoms into a moving examination of identity, community, and growing up under the weight of generational trauma.

The appeal of narrative nonfiction is that it invites us to learn about real-life people and events in a way that’s both edifying and enthralling. By enhancing factual accounts with literary techniques like world-building, character development, rising action, and compelling dialogue, authors of narrative nonfiction connect with their readers on multiple levels — and, ideally, help them gain a more thorough understanding of the topic at hand. The key, of course, is applying these narrative enhancements without damaging factual accuracy.

What Are the Origins of Narrative Nonfiction?

Perhaps you noticed that a number of the authors mentioned thus far are journalists . In fact, the origins of narrative nonfiction can be traced back to the New Journalism movement of the 1960s, which sought to infuse nonfiction reporting with literary sensibilities. Traditional journalism typically featured reporters who delivered the news with impartial authority. New Journalists, in contrast, saw personal transparency, subjective reporting, and uniqueness of voice as keys to capturing a moment and connecting with an audience. Leaders of the New Journalism movement included Tom Wolfe, Truman Capote , Joan Didion , Hunter S. Thompson , and Norman Mailer . While their works differed in tone and format — for instance, Tom Wolfe’s Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and Norman Mailer’s Armies of the Night tended toward novelistic memoir, while Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood was an innovative true crime book — they all pushed back at the notion that neutrality was necessary for impactful and effective journalism.

Are There Controversies About Narrative Nonfiction?

When you test the limits of nonfiction, you inevitably run into thorny issues about the truth. After all, how much creative license are you allowed to take before your true-life account crosses into fiction? As a result, narrative nonfiction has had its share of controversies. Throughout his career, Capote faced questioning about the veracity of certain scenes and dialogue from In Cold Blood. Janet Malcolm, an author and a New Yorker journalist who frequently explored issues of journalistic objectivity in her work, was sued for libel by a subject of her 1984 book In the Freud Archives . She later provoked debate in 1990 with The Journalist and the Murderer, which delves into the ethics of journalism and the troubled relationship between an author and their subject. Perhaps the most high-profile narrative nonfiction controversy centers on James Frey’s 2003 book A Million Little Pieces . While the work was marketed as a memoir, it was later revealed to contain multiple alterations and outright fabrications . The revelation sparked a heated conversation over what constitutes a memoir and led to a notoriously tense interview with Oprah Winfrey just weeks after she had picked the book for her book club.

What Are Some Different Styles of Narrative Nonfiction?

As discussed, narrative nonfiction covers an array of subjects, styles, and authorial positions. Here are just a few of the most popular subgenres of narrative nonfiction.

Historical Nonfiction

Historical nonfiction books investigate the chapters of the past from a lively perspective, bringing yesteryear to life and often drawing parallels to present-day events. Popular works include In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson and Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns, an award-winning account of Black migration in America. Another excellent example of historical nonfiction is You Have to Be Prepared to Die Before You Can Begin to Live by journalist Paul Kix. In it, Kix vividly chronicles Project C, the 10-week 1963 Civil Rights campaign to desegregate Birmingham, Alabama, that was led by Martin Luther King, Jr., Wyatt Walker, Fred Shuttlesworth, and James Bevel. Kix’s gripping prose and fine eye for detail transport readers back to this crucial moment in history, guiding us through the campaign and tracing a clear line from the events of 1963 to today’s continuing fight against discrimination and racial inequality .

True crime is a popular literary genre that traces back through history but reached a new level of readership with the 1966 publication of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood . The influential work centers on the 1959 murder of the Clutter family in Kansas. Capote spent years researching the murders, gathering accounts from locals, and interviewing the convicted killers before crafting his account. The resulting narrative was a national bestseller that read more like a novel than a work of reporting — indeed, Capote himself viewed In Cold Blood as a “ nonfiction novel .” Today it stands as a landmark of true crime and narrative nonfiction. A modern-day example of exceptional true crime is Elon Green’s Last Call : A True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York . The Edgar Award–winning book examines the lesser-known case of the Last Call Killer, a serial murderer who targeted gay men in New York City in the 1980s and ’90s, at the height of the AIDS epidemic. Green’s book not only recounts the investigation but condemns the entrenched intolerance that allowed these killings to go overlooked for years, and it champions the strength of the gay community in the face of violence, persecution, and sustained social ostracization.

Investigative Journalism

In many ways, investigative journalism is an ideal form of narrative nonfiction: Each account examines a harrowing real-life event from a deeply personal perspective, often with the journalist at the center of their own story. All the President’s Men by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward is a seminal work. More recent examples include Beth Macy’s Dopesick, which examines the opioid crisis in America, and She Said by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, which recounts the sexual harassment investigation that sparked the #MeToo reckoning. In Bad City: Peril and Power in the City of Angels , Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Paul Pringle combines investigative reporting with personal narrative to compelling effect. The nonfiction thriller takes readers along for the ride as Pringle and his colleagues at the L.A. Times unearth a web of criminality at the University of Southern California and root out corruption across Los Angeles. Rather than writing an impartial report, Pringle chronicles the investigation from his perspective, beat by beat. As a result, Bad City reads like a noir novel come to life, merging true crime and investigative reporting with the shocking twists of an L.A. mystery .

We’ve only just begun to scratch the surface of narrative nonfiction, and there’s a vast world to explore. Whether you’re looking to dive deep into the past, learn about scientific breakthroughs, or lose yourself in a true-life story, there’s a perfect nonfiction book out there that will open your eyes and keep you enthralled until the last page is turned.

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Narrative Nonfiction Books: Definition and Examples

Hannah Yang

What is narrative nonfiction, narrative nonfiction examples, how prowritingaid can help you write narrative nonfiction.

There are countless types of nonfiction books that you can consider writing. One popular genre you might have heard of is narrative nonfiction.

So, what exactly is narrative nonfiction?

The short answer is that narrative nonfiction is any true story written in the style of a fiction novel.

Read on to learn more about what narrative nonfiction looks like as well as some examples of bestselling narrative nonfiction books.

Let’s start with a quick overview of what narrative nonfiction means.

Narrative Nonfiction Definition

Narrative nonfiction, which is also sometimes called literary nonfiction or creative nonfiction, is a subgenre of nonfiction . This subgenre includes any true story that’s written in the style of a novel.

It’s easy to understand this term if you break it down into its component parts. The first word, narrative, means story. The second word, nonfiction , means writing that’s based on fact rather than imagination.

So, if you put those two words together, it’s clear that narrative nonfiction refers to true events that are written in the style of a story.

Narrative Nonfiction Meaning

You can think of narrative nonfiction as a genre that focuses both on conveying the truth and on telling a good story.

Everything in a narrative nonfiction book should be an accurate portrayal of true events. However, those events are told using techniques that are often used in fiction.

For example, narrative nonfiction writers might consider writing craft elements such as plot structure, character development, and effective world-building to craft a compelling story.

Most narrative nonfiction books include the following elements:

A protagonist (either the author themselves or the core subject of the story)

A cast of characters (who are real people)

Immersive, fleshed-out scenes

A plot arc similar to the plot arcs found in fiction novels

Use of literary devices such as metaphors, symbols, and flashbacks

Some narrative nonfiction writers also play with more creative elements to make the story more intriguing, such as multiple POVs, alternating timelines, and even the inclusion of emails, diary entries, and text messages.

Be confident about grammar

Check every email, essay, or story for grammar mistakes. Fix them before you press send.

At the end of the day, though, narrative nonfiction is still a form of nonfiction. That means it’s important to try to be as accurate as possible.

Authors writing in this genre need extensive research skills, whether that means combing through historical records or interviewing experts. It’s impossible to create a completely accurate representation of any true story, so it’s fine to take some creative license when writing narrative nonfiction, but most authors still do as much research as they can to make sure they’re correctly depicting what happened.

Which Genres Count as Narrative Nonfiction?

It’s hard to draw a clear line around what counts as narrative nonfiction since many works of writing blur the lines between subgenres.

Two genres that commonly intersect with narrative nonfiction are memoir and autobiography, which are terms that apply when an author tells the story of their own life. When these stories are told in a narrative style, some people consider that to be narrative nonfiction or literary nonfiction, while others believe memoir and autobiography should be a separate category.

Most journalism and biographies aren’t included under the narrative nonfiction umbrella, since they usually focus more on reporting than on telling a story. Still, a form of journalism called literary journalism deliberately aims to tell personal stories in a more creative way, and there are also biographies that do the same.

Some books in other nonfiction subgenres, such as travel writing, true crime, and even food writing, can also be told in a way that resembles narrative nonfiction. In fact, more and more nonfiction books these days are using literary techniques to hook readers in.

Narrative nonfiction books can focus on just about any topic as long as they use literary styles to tell true stories. If you’re writing nonfiction, you can definitely consider incorporating literary elements to craft a compelling narrative around your topic.

The best way to understand a genre of writing is by reading examples within that genre. Here are ten of the best narrative nonfiction books to add to your reading list.

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (1965)

Truman Capote, best known for his novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s, started out as a fiction writer. When he wrote In Cold Blood , he famously called it a “nonfiction novel,” which introduced that term into the popular consciousness for the first time.

In Cold Blood tells the story of a brutal quadruple murder that took place in 1959 in Holcomb, Kansas. The book describes the details of the murder, the ensuing investigation, and the eventual arrest of the murderers.

In many ways, In Cold Blood defined the narrative nonfiction genre. It was one of the first times an author had written journalism in the structure of a novel, and it inspired many future writers to try creative nonfiction too.

Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer (1997)

Jon Krakauer is a journalist and a mountaineer who summited Mt. Everest on the day a terrible storm hit the mountain. That storm ended up claiming five lives and leaving Krakauer himself ridden with guilt.

Into Thin Air is Krakauer’s account of his adventure and its deadly aftermath. It portrays the entire cast of characters that accompanied him up the mountain and also shows the character growth Krakauer experienced as a result.

This book is a famous example of a memoir that reads like an adventure novel. The American Academy of Arts and Letters gave this book an Academy Award in Literature in 1999 and described it as combining “the finest tradition of investigative journalism with the stylish subtlety and profound insight of the born writer.”

Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand (1999)

Seabiscuit was a California racehorse in the 1930s. Because of his crooked leg, he was never expected to win.

However, when Seabiscuit was bought by Charles Howard and ridden by a jockey named Red Pollard, he rose to unexpected success. Now, Seabiscuit is remembered as one of the most iconic racehorses of all time.

Laura Hillenbrand, an equestrian writer, tells Seabiscuit’s story in this classic work of narrative nonfiction. Charles Howard, Red Pollard, and all the other characters involved in Seabiscuit’s life are researched and portrayed in a masterful way.

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi (2003)

From 1995 to 1997, Nafisi led a secret book club at her house in Tehran. Every Thursday, she met with her most dedicated female student to read banned Western classics together, from Pride and Prejudice to Lolita.

In Reading Lolita in Tehran , Nafisi describes her experiences throughout the Iranian revolution. It’s a gripping book that provides rare and extraordinary insight into what it was like to be a woman in Tehran in the late 1990s.

Like all great narrative nonfiction, this book would be a compelling novel even if you didn’t know it was a true story, but the fact that it’s all true makes it even more powerful.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (2010)

Henrietta Lacks was a Black woman whose cells were taken by medical researchers in 1951 without her knowledge or consent. Ever since then, her cells, now known as HeLa cells, have been kept alive for medical uses.

HeLa cells have been essential for researching diseases, creating the polio vaccination, and making other medical breakthroughs. And yet, her family never benefited from or consented to their use.

Rebecca Skloot’s bestselling book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks tells Lacks’ story in a thoughtful and illuminating way, weaving in research on the unjust intersection of medicine and race. The book won many awards and was later made into an HBO movie.

Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly (2016)

America’s achievements in space could never have happened without the contributions of Black female mathematicians at NASA, known as “human computers.” Before modern computers existed, these women used pen and paper to perform the calculations that launched rockets into space.

Shetterly’s book tells the stories of four of these brilliant women: Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, and Christine Darden. The story follows them for over three decades as they overcame racial and gender prejudices to help shape American history.

This work of literary nonfiction is well-researched, informative, and powerful. It was also made into a major motion picture by Twentieth Century Fox.

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi (2016)

Paul Kalanithi, a Stanford neurosurgeon, was only 36 years old when he received his Stage IV lung cancer diagnosis. He went from treating patients to becoming the patient in such a short span of time that he had to quickly learn how to accept his own mortality.

Kalanithi wrote this medical memoir during the last years of his life, describing how he came to terms with his diagnosis. When Breath Becomes Air tells Kalanithi’s story in a poignant and unforgettable way.

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann (2017)

Killers of the Flower Moon is a true crime murder mystery about a terrible crime in the 1920s, when members of the Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma started getting killed one by one. Anyone who tried to investigate was in danger of getting murdered too until the death toll rose to over two dozen.

When the truth was finally uncovered, it turned out to be a chilling conspiracy bolstered by prejudice against Indigenous people.

Journalist David Grann tells the story of this shocking crime in this narrative nonfiction book, which is soon to be made into a major motion picture.

I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer by Michelle McNamara (2018)

The Golden State Killer was a serial killer who raped and murdered dozens of people in the 1970s and 1980s. Michelle McNamara was a true crime journalist who coined the name “Golden State Killer” in 2013 when she was poring over police records, determined to figure out the killer’s identity.

I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, which was still in the process of being written when McNamara died, blurs the genres between nonfiction, memoir, and crime fiction. The book eventually helped lead to the killer’s capture.

Facing the Mountain: A True Story of Japanese American Heroes in WWII by Daniel James Brown (2021)

After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Japanese Americans faced suspicion and systemic prejudice from their own country. In spite of the injustices they faced over the next several years, many Japanese Americans still signed up to fight for the US in World War II.

In Facing the Mountain , Daniel James Brown tells the stories of four Japanese American heroes: Rudy Tokiwa, Kats Miho, Gordon Hirabayashi, and Fred Shiosaki. The book follows these four men and their families and communities, who were irreversibly impacted by the events of the war.

Writing narrative nonfiction can be incredibly rewarding, but it can also be unusually tricky because you have to accomplish two goals at once. Unlike other nonfiction, which aims to inform, or most fiction, which aims to entertain, narrative nonfiction seeks to inform and entertain at the same time.

To inform, you’ll need your writing to be clear and easily readable. To entertain, you’ll need it to be gripping and active.

ProWritingAid can help with both of those goals. At the most basic level, the AI-powered grammar checker will make sure your writing is free of grammar, spelling, and punctuation mistakes. At a more sophisticated level, it will also make sure you’re hooking your reader in by using the active voice, precise word choices, and varied sentence lengths.

In addition, you can also use ProWritingAid to make sure you’re writing in the right tone and for the right reading level. Running your narrative nonfiction manuscript through ProWritingAid will ensure your writing truly shines.

There you have it—our complete guide to narrative nonfiction.

Good luck, and happy writing!

Hannah is a speculative fiction writer who loves all things strange and surreal. She holds a BA from Yale University and lives in Colorado. When she’s not busy writing, you can find her painting watercolors, playing her ukulele, or hiking in the Rockies. Follow her work on hannahyang.com or on Twitter at @hannahxyang.

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Literary Devices

Literary devices, terms, and elements, definition of biography.

A biography is a description of a real person’s life, including factual details as well as stories from the person’s life. Biographies usually include information about the subject’s personality and motivations, and other kinds of intimate details excluded in a general overview or profile of a person’s life. The vast majority of biography examples are written about people who are or were famous, such as politicians, actors, athletes, and so on. However, some biographies can be written about people who lived incredible lives, but were not necessarily well-known. A biography can be labelled “authorized” if the person being written about, or his or her family members, have given permission for a certain author to write the biography.

The word biography comes from the Greek words bios , meaning “life” and – graphia , meaning “writing.”

Difference Between Biography and Autobiography

A biography is a description of a life that is not the author’s own, while an autobiography is the description of a writer’s own life. There can be some gray area, however, in the definition of biography when a ghostwriter is employed. A ghostwriter is an author who helps in the creation of a book, either collaborating with someone else or doing all of the writing him- or herself. Some famous people ask for the help of a ghostwriter to create their own autobiographies if they are not particularly gifted at writing but want the story to sound like it’s coming from their own mouths. In the case of a ghostwritten autobiography, the writer is not actually writing about his or her own life, but has enough input from the subject to create a work that is very close to the person’s experience.

Common Examples of Biography

The genre of biography is so popular that there is even a cable network originally devoted to telling the stories of famous people’s lives (fittingly called The Biography Channel). The stories proved to be such good television that other networks caught on, such as VH1 producing biographies under the series name “Behind the Music.” Some examples of written biographies have become famous in their own right, such as the following books:

Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow (made even more famous by the musical “Hamilton,” created by Lin-Manuel Miranda)
Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand
Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World by Tracy Kidder
Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace … One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson

Significance of Biography in Literature

The genre of biography developed out of other forms of historical nonfiction, choosing to focus on one specific person’s experience rather than all important players. There are examples of biography all the way back to 44 B.C. when Roman biographer Cornelius Nepos wrote Excellentium Imperatorum Vitae (“Lives of those capable of commanding”). The Greek historian Plutarch was also famous for his biographies, creating a series of biographies of famous Greeks and Romans in his book Parallel Lives . After the printing press was created, one of the first “bestsellers” was the 1550 famous biography Lives of the Artists by Giorgio Vasari. Biography then got very popular in the 18th century with James Boswell’s 1791 publication of The Life of Samuel Johnson . Biography continues to be one of the best selling genres in literature, and has led to a number of literary prizes specifically for this form.

Examples of Biography in Literature

And I can imagine Farmer saying he doesn’t care if no one else is willing to follow their example. He’s still going to make these hikes, he’d insist, because if you say that seven hours is too long to walk for two families of patients, you’re saying that their lives matter less than some others’, and the idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that’s wrong with the world.

( Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World by Tracy Kidder)

Tracy Kidder’s wonderful example of biography, Mountains Beyond Mountains , brought the work of Dr. Paul Farmer to a wider audience. Dr. Farmer cofounded the organization Partners in Health (PIH) in 1987 to provide free treatment to patients in Haiti; the organization later created similar projects in countries such as Russia, Peru, and Rwanda. Dr. Farmer was not necessarily a famous man before Tracy Kidder’s biography was published, though he was well-regarded in his own field. The biography describes Farmer’s work as well as some of his personal life.

On July 2, McCandless finished reading Tolstoy’s “Family Happiness”, having marked several passages that moved him: “He was right in saying that the only certain happiness in life is to live for others…” Then, on July 3, he shouldered his backpack and began the twenty-mile hike to the improved road. Two days later, halfway there, he arrived in heavy rain at the beaver ponds that blocked access to the west bank of the Teklanika River. In April they’d been frozen over and hadn’t presented an obstacle. Now he must have been alarmed to find a three-acre lake covering the trail.

( Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer)

Jon Krakauer is a writer and outdoorsman famous for many nonfiction books, including his own experience in a mountaineering disaster on Mount Everest in 1996. His book Into the Wild is a nonfiction biography of a young boy, Christopher McCandless who chose to donate all of his money and go into the wilderness in the American West. McCandless starved to death in Denali National Park in 1992. The biography delved into the facts surrounding McCandless’s death, as well as incorporating some of Krakauer’s own experience.

A commanding woman versed in politics, diplomacy, and governance; fluent in nine languages; silver-tongued and charismatic, Cleopatra nonetheless seems the joint creation of Roman propagandists and Hollywood directors.

( Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff)

Stacy Schiff wrote a new biography of Cleopatra in 2010 in order to divide fact from fiction, and go back to the amazing and intriguing personality of the woman herself. The biography was very well received for being both scrupulously referenced as well as highly literary and imaginative.

Confident that he was clever, resourceful, and bold enough to escape any predicament, [Louie] was almost incapable of discouragement. When history carried him into war, this resilient optimism would define him.

( Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand)

Laura Hillenbrand’s bestselling biography Unbroken covers the life of Louis “Louie” Zamperini, who lived through almost unbelievable circumstances, including running in the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, being shot down as a bomber in WWII, surviving in a raft in the ocean for 47 days, and then surviving Japanese prisoner of war camps. Zamperini’s life story is one of those narratives that is “stranger than fiction” and Hillenbrand brings the drama brilliantly to the reader.

I remember sitting in his backyard in his garden, one day, and he started talking about God. He [Jobs] said, “ Sometimes I believe in God, sometimes I don’t. I think it’s 50/50, maybe. But ever since I’ve had cancer, I’ve been thinking about it more, and I find myself believing a bit more, maybe it’s because I want to believe in an afterlife, that when you die, it doesn’t just all disappear. The wisdom you’ve accumulated, somehow it lives on.”

( Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson)

Steve Jobs is one of the most famous cultural icons of modern-day America and, indeed, around the world, and thus his biography was eagerly awaited. The author, Walter Isaacson, was able to interview Jobs extensively during the writing process. Thus, the above excerpt is possible where the writer is a character in the story himself, asking Jobs about his views on life and philosophy of the world.

Test Your Knowledge of Biography

1. Which of the following statements is the best biography definition? A. A retelling of one small moment from another person’s life. B. A novel which details one specific character’s full life. C. A description of a real person’s entire life, written by someone else.

2. Which of the following scenarios qualifies as a biography? A. A famous person contracts a ghostwriter to create an autobiography. B. A famous author writes the true and incredible life story of a little known person. C. A writer creates a book detailing the most important moments in her own life.

3. Which of the following statements is true? A. Biographies are one of the best selling genres in contemporary literature. B. Biographies are always written about famous people. C. Biographies were first written in the 18th century.

What is Narrative Nonfiction? Meaning and Types

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Have you heard about the term Narrative Nonfiction? This form of writing is popular among readers.

Narrative nonfiction brings life to true stories by inducing the element of fiction to make it more exciting and engaging. When a real-life story is told with a proper plotline, dialogues, and added suspense, it becomes all the more interesting!

In this article, I have explained the concept of narrative fiction in detail, along with recommending some books under the category. Want to learn more about the topic? Then stay with me throughout the article!

Table of Contents

What is Narrative Nonfiction?

Before stating the meaning of narrative nonfiction , let me briefly describe what fiction and nonfiction are. Fiction is a type of writing based on a person’s imagination, whereas nonfiction is based on facts and features.

Narrative nonfiction is a type of nonfiction writing where a story is written based on facts, information, and true events, but it is written in the style of a fiction novel, inducing entertainment, suspense, character development, and more to make it interesting and engaging for the readers.

Creative nonfiction and literary nonfiction are other terms that can be used instead of narrative nonfiction. In short, it means incorporating literary styles and techniques to tell a true story.

In this kind of writing, a balance must be maintained between imagination and ethical behavior so that the content remains true throughout. A blend of accurate information and entertainment!

Types of Narrative Nonfiction

If we talk about the types of narrative nonfiction, then there are two categories they can be divided into: Media and Novels.

Modern Media

Nowadays, the media sector is also using narrative nonfiction writing. Whether it be publishing news articles, magazines, podcasts, etc., fact-based storytelling is taking its place everywhere. The difference between both styles of writing is a blur.

Modern Books

Many authors are incorporating fictional methods into nonfiction writings to make the books engaging.

Writing true factual information using elements such as plot, dialogues, mystery , and scenes is a new way to narrate the stories, known as narrative nonfiction.

What Makes Narrative Nonfiction Writing Good?

It is essential to understand the basic elements to make a narrative nonfiction writing good. You need to know a few major aspects before diving into this category. I have mentioned some points below for you to check out!

Research is a very important step in the writing process. Every type of writing requires thorough research, and every writer, regardless of the genre and category in which they are writing, has to do research beforehand.

Narrative nonfiction is a combination of fiction and nonfiction, so with the storytelling element, it should also be informative.

The factual information should be gathered through interviews, diary entries, newspaper articles, historical reports, etc., in order for the data to be accurate and reliable.

So, the writers should ensure conducting proper research, developing an understanding of the topic, and fact-checking everything before putting the data in writing.

Balance Between Fact and Fiction

While writing narrative nonfiction, it is essential to understand how much fact and fiction can be included to maintain the overall balance.

This kind of writing uses literary styles and techniques to make the story interesting, along with stating the facts and information accurately.

But it is tough to represent every detail of an event that happened long ago with complete accuracy and reliability until and unless you have records and sources for everything.

So, in these situations, authors use conjecture in the narratives to fill the gap and maintain the flow.

As a writer, ensure to maintain the balance between fact and fiction so the story is entertaining without losing the essence of truth. Also, while using conjecture, keep it subtle and informed so it does not sound like a true statement.

Author Presence

It is important to have an individual perspective within the story so it feels authentic to the readers. In narrative nonfiction, the presence of a strong authorial voice is less, but it must be subtly present throughout to drive the story.

In the stories, there are a lot of interviews, original research, reports, etc., so the readers may feel the lack of narration, but including the author’s perspective in several areas makes them a part of the story.

Writers should keep in mind to involve their voice in the story so the readers can connect with it more and understand the motive and thoughts behind the actual work.

High Quality

The quality of writing plays a vital role in narrative nonfiction. As a writer, you cannot state the facts directly without adding other elements because it will make the story bland.

Narrative nonfiction needs the elements of fiction, plot, dialogues, suspense, etc. so that readers can find it entertaining to read. Using various writing styles and techniques is essential to enhance the quality of the writing.

You can be playful, switch timelines, change perspective, make it intriguing, and add mystery to make the story overall a worthy read.

Some Narrative Nonfiction Books to Read 2024

There are several good narrative nonfiction books to read, and I have added three books below. You can have a look!

The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Friday Night Lights by H.G. Bissinger

Brief Descriptions of the Nonfiction Books

The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder

In 1740, the British vessel called Wager left England on a secret mission during the war but was wrecked on an island. After suffering months of starvation, the men on the ship built a craft and sailed for over a hundred days; finally, thirty men reached the coast of Brazil. These men had tales to tell and were greeted as heroes.

Six months later, another group arrived who had a very different tale of the past. They claimed the other group as mutineers, not heroes. Both groups accused each other, and the fight carried on. A court-martial revealed a shocking truth.

The author has incredibly narrated this incident.

In Cold Blood

This narrative nonfiction book narrates the incident of November 15, 1959, where members of the Clutter family who lived in Holcomb, Kansas, were brutally murdered. They were killed by a shotgun held a few inches away from their faces.

A real-life cold-blooded murder mystery . The author reconstructs the murder case and the entire investigation that led to the final execution of the culprits.

Friday Night Lights

This is a classic story of a high school football team. Permian Panthers of Odessa is the best high school football team in the history of Texas. Friday Night plays of the Panthers from September to December were known to be a big deal.

The author narrates a season in the life of Odessa and shows the devotion of the community toward the team.

Nonfiction lovers should know the various types of this category to differentiate and pick their reads. Lately, this form of writing is preferred by many. I hope this article clarifies the concept of narrative nonfiction.

Do you like to read narrative nonfiction books? Which is your favorite?

Genre Confusion: Memoir vs. Nonfiction Narrative

August 5, 2013 // by Janet Grant // 37 Comments

Blogger: Janet Kobobel Grant

I regularly hear writers, agents and even editors misidentify what they are talking about when the discussion turns to narrative nonfiction and memoir.

The word memoir has developed cache in today’s market, which has resulted in many industry professionals using it as a catch-all word to communicate a personal story. But, in actuality, memoir is a subcategory of narrative nonfiction.

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

The manuscript is told as a story,
with characters (actual people),
a protagonist (generally the author or the subject of the book),
a character arc,
fleshed-out scenes,
and a story arc.

In other words, both memoir and narrative nonfiction use fiction techniques to put the reader into the moment of the story. Think Seabiscuit or Unbroken , both of which required immense research but are told as gripping stories. They are examples of narrative nonfiction.

Narrative nonfiction could tell a story as an objective, journalistic piece, such as Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. A memoir would not take that approach but is subjective, based on the writer’s perspective of what happened.

A memoir consists of not only a factual story but also:

Generally is told in first person about an individual’s unique experience.
Is swathed in lavish language. Memoirs are expected to attain a certain literary quality. Which is why, when a standup comedian writes a “memoir,” it’s highly unlikely to qualify for that label. His or her book is more likely to be an autobiography. But we don’t use that label much nowadays because “memoirs” are more sought after.
Doesn’t usually tell the author’s entire life but instead portrays a snippet of it (the day the person happened to be in the twin towers and they fell down, then the aftermath in that person’s life).
Tend to be more introspective than other narrative nonfiction.

If you’d like to check out Flavorwire’s opinion of the 10 best memoirs ever written, look here .

What’s your favorite narrative nonfiction and/or memoir?

Why might it be important to correctly label your manuscript?

What’s the difference between memoir and narrative nonfiction? Click to tweet.

Why do most publishers and authors label a book “memoir,” even if it isn’t? Click to tweet .

Reader Interactions

How to Master Narrative Nonfiction – A Guide to Telling Great True Stories

by Harry Wallett

Do you have an incredible true story but are unsure how to tell it? Indeed, personal accounts can be difficult to write if they’re too personal. So, consider the approach of narrative nonfiction writers who reveal their true stories through the devices relied on by fiction writers.

There are undoubtedly many ways to tell personal stories – you might choose to stick directly to the facts and give a straightforward account of the real-life events leading to the story’s climax. Or you might consider a more creative approach to bringing your story to life.

This article is about narrative nonfiction and literary techniques you might consider borrowing from fiction storytelling. We’ll share some great examples of narrative nonfiction encompassing true crime, travel writing, and serial killer tales that have contributed to this increasingly popular genre.

What is the definition of narrative nonfiction?

Narrative nonfiction is often referred to as literary nonfiction or creative nonfiction, and these terms are used to describe true stories written in the typical style of a fiction novel.

Some narrative nonfiction examples:

Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand – the story of a real-life racehorse and its rise to success during World War II.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot – written through intense research of interview and meeting transcripts, photos, and notes from a real-world event.
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote – attributed as the piece that changed literary journalism, using true crime events with fiction storytelling techniques. One man’s journey into the depths of crime and its consequences.

Narrative nonfiction writers aim to take the facts of true events and compellingly tell them – in the way that fiction writers make creative choices about how they reveal revelations and plot points.

And while there’s an emphasis on storytelling, the best narrative nonfiction books rely on the truth as much as possible.

What Is the Difference Between Nonfiction Narratives and Memoir?

Good question!

While memoir and narrative nonfiction aim for factually accurate storytelling, there are some significant differences in the mediums.

What is a memoir?

A memoir uses a first-person narrator regaling personal stories, seeking the emotional truth. Memoir writers examine and re-evaluate the events of their lives rather than simply retell the story parrot-fashion.

And while memoir usually tells a story with a linear narrative (in order of the events as they happened), the medium is most interesting when the writer views their own experiences through a critical lens.

This provides the reader with a deeper understanding of the writer’s motivations, driving the success or failure that drives the narrative. The writer might identify significant moments in the story, reflecting on how things could have been if they hadn’t made a particular decision.

What is narrative nonfiction?

Narrative nonfiction is similar to memoir in that it’s a true story written to convey real events, but it uses significant creative license in the telling. Stylistically, narrative nonfiction is closer to a fictional novel.

Narrative nonfiction requires a lot of research as the writer needs to understand every angle of the characters’ motivations and objectives within the prism of the specific world of the story.

Factual and well researched

A narrative nonfiction writer will use extensive research techniques, such as:

Extensive interviews – exploring the story from every possible angle through the people who were there
Newspaper articles and news reports – helping the writer understand the popular interpretation or events
Geological history – recognizing the significance of location in a historical context
Personal essays or journals – analyzing first-person accounts from the protagonists and central characters of the action

Which techniques do narrative nonfiction books borrow from literary fiction?

A remarkable fictional novel has great characters with clear objectives, a problem that leads to a crisis, and a confrontation that leads to a resolution. And narrative nonfiction books rely heavily on these tropes to regale a true story in an exciting way.

Let’s look at those in a little more detail:

Narrative nonfiction needs fascinating characters

The narrative nonfiction writer gathers personal experience from the principal “characters” in the story. They seek out the truth and make creative decisions regarding the details of the characters’ pasts that may have contributed to their significant actions in the true story.

A compelling character has:

An objective – something they want that they believe will help solve the problem of the world
A redemption arc – something in the past that haunts them and drives them to redeem themselves
A fatal flaw – something that threatens their ultimate success (some kind of self-destructive behavior, such as addiction or poor life choices)

Narrative nonfiction needs a problem, a crisis, and a confrontation

In creative fiction, a character is nothing without a problem to overcome. In great novels, the problem of the world is almost insurmountable – it requires the protagonist to go on a journey of self-discovery to overcome the obstacles holding them back from self-actualization.

What is the structure of narrative nonfiction books?

In a literary fiction novel, the problem of the world drives the character’s objective, and this kickstarts our storyline structure.

The second part of the story is where the protagonist pursues their objective and achieves it, but this turns the problem into a crisis because the pursuit didn’t solve it.

So, the story’s third section forces the protagonist to confront the problem head-on. But they often fail, or the problem becomes too complicated to overcome. Typically, they hit the reverse climax (or their low point) at this stage.

And that low point drives the protagonist to make the final confrontation in the fourth section of the story, truly addressing the problem holding them back at the novel’s beginning.

Of course, in real life, stories don’t always have a happy ending, so the fourth section – the confrontation – can equally result in failure as success.

And the narrative nonfiction genre is most successful when the writer considers these storytelling elements.

Some great narrative nonfiction books for you to read

Some of your best learning as a writer comes from your dedication to reading. So, it’s always helpful to be well-read in the creative genre you seek to pursue. I think these books find the right balance between fact and fiction.

The right balance between fact and fiction

If you’re new to the narrative nonfiction genre, check out our top recommendations:

Best-selling books to read

Hidden figures by margot lee shetterly .

You might have seen the 2016 movie starring Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monáe, and Kevin Costner, about the team of brilliant black women who significantly contributed to launching the first rockets into space.

This story has it all:

An insurmountable world problem.
Clear-cut objectives of the principal characters.
Intense obstacles to overcome.
A compelling story that drives you all the way through to the end.

A brilliant read.

My Friend Anna by Rachel DeLoache Williams

A narrative nonfiction book that has inspired a compelling podcast and a Netflix series about Anna Delvey, who swindled her way into the New York art scene, leaving a string of huge debts in her wake.

This story is driven by a compelling narrative that effectively shines a light on the capitalistic greed that has shaped American history.

Travelling to Infinity by Jane Hawking

This is the nonfiction narrative that inspired the 2014 movie, The Theory of Everything . We follow fascinating and somewhat eccentric characters as we explore the devastating personal life of world-famous British scientist Stephen Hawking, told from the perspective of his wife, Jane Hawking.

An emotional journey that keeps you hooked to the end.

True stories to engage and educate middle-grade readers

You’re never too young to adopt the narrative nonfiction writing style. Check out some of our recommendations for literary works that rely on stories that explore personal experiences, high-school football, the plight of African Americans, and the American dream.

Check out these collections of short stories and full-length narrative nonfiction books:

Mud, Sweat and Tears by Bear Grylls
The Elephant Whisperer by Lawrence Anthony
The Acclaimed Biography of Sean Smith by JK Rowling
Children of the Blitz by Robert Westall
Alma’s Suitcase by Karen Levine
Nothing is Impossible by Christopher Reeve
If Only They Could Talk by James Herriot
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
The Last Rhinos by Rose Humphreys

Want to Learn More About Writing Narrative nonfiction?

Check out Cascadia’s blog for tons of helpful articles that help develop your skills in writing narrative nonfiction books with high-quality narratives.

We help ambitious people who want to kickstart their book careers, helping time-pressed people connect with reputable publishing professionals.

Find out more about Cascadia here .

Harry Wallett is the Managing Director of Cascadia Author Services. He has a decade of experience as the Founder and Managing Director of Relay Publishing, which has sold over 3 million copies of books in all genres for its authors, and looks after a team of 50+ industry professionals working across the world.

Harry is inspired by the process of book creation and is passionate about the stories and characters behind the prose. He loves working with the writers and has shepherded 1000s of titles to publication over the years. He knows first-hand what it takes to not only create an unputdownable book, but also how to get it into the hands of the right readers for success.

Books are still one of the most powerful mediums to communicate ideas and establish indisputable authority in a field, boosting your reach and stature. But publishing isn’t a quick and easy process—nor should it be, or everyone would do it!

Same Cascadia, New Management!

Protected: Publishing for Peace: Author Ben JS Maure Inspires Canadian Peacekeepers

Unleashing Literary Flames: Award-Winning Author TK Riggins Keeps Readers Coming Back for More with 7-Book Series

Author Ray McGinnis Reaches an International Audience with 100+ Interviews in 2 Years

Get our free definitive guide to creating a nonfiction bestseller here.

Claudia Ann Seaman Award

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Sep 4, 2023

Your Life as a Narrative: A Guide to Creative Nonfiction

Updated: Sep 19, 2023

By Erin Yoo

Creative nonfiction can sometimes be a difficult genre to pinpoint. It requires the use of traditional narrative elements as seen in any sort of creative writing, while also needing to stay true to real events from the author’s lived experiences. To write in this genre, you must simultaneously be an author and a character, and striking the right balance can be a difficult task when starting out. Below are some aspects of creative nonfiction that you might want to keep in mind as you make your foray!

Character Development

Especially in creative nonfiction, character development is critical, as it is often what drives the plot. One of the trickiest parts of writing creative nonfiction is character development. From a submissions standpoint, it can be what bridges the divide between a piece’s acceptance or decline. When employing the “Show, Don’t Tell” strategy of writing, writers might forget to provide sufficient background information or context as well as humanize the character. This may cause the primary character to seem like a “flat” character, instead of a “round” character, when well-developed narrators are foundational in exemplary creative nonfiction writing. Remember that in nonfiction, you’re sharing a part of your story, but readers won’t know everything that has affected your perceptions and identity up to that point—giving them a layout of the “before” part of your narrative can help make sure everyone is on the right page to go forward.

Dialogue is an essential aspect of the creative nonfiction genre, but is oftentimes overlooked by writers. Even if you are planning to utilize the “Show, Don’t Tell strategy,” it is still important to consider adding dialogue. Dialogue not only provides a humanizing and immersive atmosphere for the reader to be actively engaged in the piece throughout, but it also provides a means to introduce a character more effectively when utilized well.

Figurative Language and Literary Devices

Figurative language is often seen as an aspect of writing that is used strictly for poetry. However, that doesn’t need to be the case! Employing figurative language and literary devices – including metaphors, motifs, themes, personification, etc. – can be an equally effective tool for creative nonfiction pieces as well. A creative nonfiction author can compare their past experiences to any number of abstract things, and might even find recurring objects, location, or moods (such as a favorite food or a type of weather) to use as symbolism while staying true to themselves and their personal story.

The “Show, Don’t Tell” Technique

The common writing strategy of “Show, Don’t Tell” can be a difficult line to walk. If writers withhold too much information from the reader in favor of “showing” it, they might inadvertently make it harder for readers to catch onto the piece’s true meaning, arc, and intentions. However, it’s still worth it to try contextualizing your story in a subtle way. Making sure to “show” the reader background information and relevant context, rather than just stating it and moving on, can also be an excellent way of incorporating some elements of imagery and other literary devices.

Hopefully this advice might help you along your creative nonfiction journey! Good luck in telling your own stories, and thank you for reading.

Erin Yoo is a blogger at Voices and a Senior Editor at Polyphony.

What Is Biography? Definition, Usage, and Literary Examples

Biography definition.

A biography (BYE-og-ruh-fee) is a written account of one person’s life authored by another person. A biography includes all pertinent details from the subject’s life, typically arranged in a chronological order. The word biography stems from the Latin biographia , which succinctly explains the word’s definition: bios = “life” + graphia = “write.”

Since the advent of the written word, historical writings have offered information about real people, but it wasn’t until the 18th century that biographies evolved into a separate literary genre. Autobiographies and memoirs fall under the broader biography genre, but they are distinct literary forms due to one key factor: the subjects themselves write these works. Biographies are popular source materials for documentaries, television shows, and motion pictures.

The History of Biographies

The biography form has its roots in Ancient Rome and Greece. In 44 BCE, Roman writer Cornelius Nepos published Excellentium Imperatorum Vitae ( Lives of the Generals ), one of the earliest recorded biographies. In 80 CE, Greek writer Plutarch released Parallel Lives , a sweeping work consisting of 48 biographies of famous men. In 121 CE, Roman historian Suetonius wrote De vita Caesarum ( On the Lives of the Caesars ), a series of 12 biographies detailing the lives of Julius Caesar and the first 11 emperors of the Roman Empire. These were among the most widely read biographies of their time, and at least portions of them have survived intact over the millennia.

During the Middle Ages, the Roman Catholic Church had a notable influence on biographies. Historical, political, and cultural biographies fell out of favor. Biographies of religious figures—including saints, popes, and church founders—replaced them. One notable exception was Italian painter/architect Giorgio Vasari’s 1550 biography, The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects , which was immensely popular. In fact, it is one of the first examples of a bestselling book.

Still, it wasn’t until the 18th century that authors began to abandon multiple subjects in a single work and instead focus their research and writing on one subject. Scholars consider James Boswell’s 1791 The Life of Samuel Johnson to be the first modern biography. From here, biographies were established as a distinct literary genre, separate from more general historical writing.

As understanding of psychology and sociology grew in the 19th and early 20th centuries, biographies further evolved, offering up even more comprehensive pictures of their subjects. Authors who played major roles in this contemporary approach to biographing include Lytton Strachey, Gamaliel Bradford, and Robert Graves.

Types of Biographies

While all biographical works chronicle the lives of real people, writers can present the information in several different ways.

Popular biographies are life histories written for a general readership. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot and Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer are two popular examples.
Critical biographies discuss the relationship between the subject’s life and the work they produced or were involved in; for example, The Billionaire Who Wasn’t: How Chuck Feeney Secretly Made and Gave Away a Fortune by Conor O’Clery and Unpresidented: A Biography of Donald Trump by Martha Brockenbrough.
Historical biographies put greater understanding on how the subject’s life and contributions affected or were affected by the times in which they lived; see John Adams by David McCullough and Catherine the Great by Peter K. Massie.
Literary biographies concentrate almost exclusively on writers and artists, blending a conventional narrative of the historical facts of the subject’s life with an exploration of how these facts impacted their creative output. Some examples include Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford and Jackson Pollock: An American Saga by Gregory White Smith and Steven Naifeh.
Reference biographies are more scholarly writings, usually written by multiple authors and covering multiple lives around a single topic. They verify facts, provide background details, and contribute supplemental information resources, like bibliographies, glossaries, and historical documents; for example, Black Americans in Congress, 1870-2007 and the Dictionary of Canadian Biography .
Fictional biographies, or biographical novels, like The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory, incorporate creative license into the retelling of a real person’s story by taking on the structure and freedoms of a novel. The term can also describe novels in which authors give an abundance of background information on their characters, to the extent that the novel reads more like a biography than fiction. An example of this is George R.R. Martin’s Fire and Blood , a novel detailing the history of a royal family from his popular A Song of Ice and Fire

Biographies and Filmed Entertainment

Movie makers and television creators frequently produce biographical stories, either as dramatized productions based on real people or as nonfiction accounts.

Documentary

This genre is a nonfictional movie or television show that uses historical records to tell the story of a subject. The subject might be a one person or a group of people, or it might be a certain topic or theme. To present a biography in a visually compelling way, documentaries utilize archival footage, recreations, and interviews with subjects, scholars, experts, and others associated with the subject.

Famous film documentaries include Grey Gardens, a biography of two of Jacqueline Kennedy’s once-wealthy cousins, who, at the time of filming, lived in squalor in a condemned mansion in the Hamptons; and I Am Not Your Negro , a biography of the life and legacy of pioneering American author James Baldwin.

Television documentary series tell one story over the course of several episodes, like The Jinx : The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst , a biography of the real estate heir and alleged serial killer that focused on his suspected crimes. There are many nonfiction television shows that use a documentary format, but subjects typically change from one episode to the next, such as A&E’s Biography and PBS’s POV .

These films are biographical motion pictures, written by screenwriters and performed by actors. They often employ a certain amount of creative liberty in their interpretation of a real life. This is largely done to maintain a feasible runtime; capturing all of the pivotal moments of a subject’s life in a 90- or 120-minute movie is all but impossible. So, filmmakers might choose to add, eliminate, or combine key events and characters, or they may focus primarily on one or only a few aspects of the subject’s life. Some popular examples: Coal Miner’s Daughter , a biography of country music legend Loretta Lynn; Malcom X , a biopic centered on the civil rights leader of the same name; and The King’s Speech , a dramatization of Prince Albert’s efforts to overcome a stutter and ascend the English throne.

Semi-fictionalized account

This approach takes a real-life event and interprets or expands it in ways that stray beyond what actually happened. This is done for entertainment and to build the story so it fits the filmmaker’s vision or evolves into a longer form, such as a multi-season television show. These accounts sometimes come with the disclaimer that they are “inspired by true events.” Examples of semi-fictionalized accounts are the TV series Orange Is the New Black , Masters of Sex , and Mozart of the Jungle —each of which stem from at least one biographical element, but showrunners expounded upon to provide many seasons of entertainment.

The Functions of Biography

Biographies inform readers about the life of a notable person. They are a way to introduce readers to the work’s subject—the historical details, the subject’s motivations and psychological underpinnings, and their environment and the impact they had, both in the short and long term.

Because the author is somewhat removed from their subject, they can offer a more omniscient, third-person narrative account. This vantage point allows the author to put certain events into a larger context; compare and contrast events, people, and behaviors predominant in the subject’s life; and delve into psychological and sociological themes of which the subject may not have been aware.

Also, a writer structures a biography to make the life of the subject interesting and readable. Most biographers want to entertain as well as inform, so they typically use a traditional plot structure—an introduction, conflict , rising of tension, a climax, a resolution, and an ending—to give the life story a narrative shape. While the ebb and flow of life is a normal day-to-day rhythm, it doesn’t necessarily make for entertaining reading. The job of the writer, then, becomes one of shaping the life to fit the elements of a good plot.

Writers Known for Biographies

Many modern writers have dedicated much of their careers to biographies, such as:

Kitty Kelley, author of Jackie Oh! An Intimate Biography; His Way: The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra ; and The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty
Antonia Fraser, author of Mary Queen of Scots ; Cromwell; Our Chief of Men ; and The Gunpowder Plot: Terror and Faith in 1605
David McCullough, author of The Path Between the Seas; Truman ; and John Adams
Andrew Morton, author of Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words; Madonna ; and Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography
Alison Weir, author of The Six Wives of Henry VIII; Eleanor of Aquitaine: By the Wrath of God; Queen of England ; and Katherine Swynford: The Story of John of Gaunt and His Scandalous Duchess

Examples of Biographies

1. James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson

The biography that ushered in the modern era of true-life writing, The Life of Samuel Johnson covered the entirety of its subject’s life, from his birth to his status as England’s preeminent writer to his death. Boswell was a personal acquaintance of Johnson, so he was able to draw on voluminous amounts of personal conversations the two shared.

What also sets this biography apart is, because Boswell was a contemporary of Johnson, readers see Johnson in the context of his own time. He wasn’t some fabled figure that a biographer was writing about centuries later; he was someone to whom the author had access, and Boswell could see the real-world influence his subject had on life in the here and now.

2. Sylvia Nasar, A Beautiful Mind

Nasar’s 1998 Pulitzer Prize-nominated biography of mathematician John Nash introduced legions of readers to Nash’s remarkable life and genius. The book opens with Nash’s childhood and follows him through his education, career, personal life, and struggles with schizophrenia. It ends with his acceptance of the 1994 Nobel Prize for Economics. In addition to a Pulitzer nomination, A Beautiful Mind won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography, was a New York Times bestseller, and provided the basis for the Academy Award-winning 2001 film of the same name.

3. Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom

Clinton’s biography of the abolitionist icon is a large-scale epic that chronicles Tubman’s singular life. It starts at her birth in the 1820s as the slave Araminta Ross, continuing through her journey to freedom; her pivotal role in the Underground Railroad; her Moses-like persona; and her death in 1913.

Because Tubman could not read or write, she left behind no letters, diaries, or other personal papers in her own hand and voice. Clinton reconstructed Tubman’s history entirely through other source material, and historians often cite this work as the quintessential biography of Tubman’s life.

4. Megan Mayhew Bergman, Almost Famous Women

Almost Famous Women is not a biography in the strictest sense of the word; it is a fictional interpretation of real-life women. Each short story revolves around a woman from history with close ties to fame, such as movie star Marlene Dietrich, Standard Oil heiress Marion “Joe” Carstairs, aviatrix Beryl Markham, Oscar Wilde’s niece Dolly, and Lord Byron’s daughter Allegra. Mayhew Bergman imagines these colorful women in equally colorful episodes that put them in a new light—a light that perhaps offers them the honor and homage that history denied them.

Further Resources on Biography

Newsweek compiled their picks for the 75 Best Biographies of All Time .

The Open Education Database has a list of 75 Biographies to Read Before You Die .

Goodreads put together a list of readers’ best biography selections .

If you’re looking to write biographies, Infoplease has instructions for writing shorter pieces, while The Writer has practical advice for writing manuscript-length bios.

Ranker collected a comprehensive list of famous biographers .

Related Terms

Autobiography
Short Story

What is creative nonfiction? Despite its slightly enigmatic name, no literary genre has grown quite as quickly as creative nonfiction in recent decades. Literary nonfiction is now well-established as a powerful means of storytelling, and bookstores now reserve large amounts of space for nonfiction, when it often used to occupy a single bookshelf.

Like any literary genre, creative nonfiction has a long history; also like other genres, defining contemporary CNF for the modern writer can be nuanced. If you’re interested in writing true-to-life stories but you’re not sure where to begin, let’s start by dissecting the creative nonfiction genre and what it means to write a modern literary essay.

What Creative Nonfiction Is

Creative nonfiction employs the creative writing techniques of literature, such as poetry and fiction, to retell a true story.

How do we define creative nonfiction? What makes it “creative,” as opposed to just “factual writing”? These are great questions to ask when entering the genre, and they require answers which could become literary essays themselves.

In short, creative nonfiction (CNF) is a form of storytelling that employs the creative writing techniques of literature, such as poetry and fiction, to retell a true story. Creative nonfiction writers don’t just share pithy anecdotes, they use craft and technique to situate the reader into their own personal lives. Fictional elements, such as character development and narrative arcs, are employed to create a cohesive story, but so are poetic elements like conceit and juxtaposition.

The CNF genre is wildly experimental, and contemporary nonfiction writers are pushing the bounds of literature by finding new ways to tell their stories. While a CNF writer might retell a personal narrative, they might also focus their gaze on history, politics, or they might use creative writing elements to write an expository essay. There are very few limits to what creative nonfiction can be, which is what makes defining the genre so difficult—but writing it so exciting.

Different Forms of Creative Nonfiction

From the autobiographies of Mark Twain and Benvenuto Cellini, to the more experimental styles of modern writers like Karl Ove Knausgård, creative nonfiction has a long history and takes a wide variety of forms. Common iterations of the creative nonfiction genre include the following:

Also known as biography or autobiography, the memoir form is probably the most recognizable form of creative nonfiction. Memoirs are collections of memories, either surrounding a single narrative thread or multiple interrelated ideas. The memoir is usually published as a book or extended piece of fiction, and many memoirs take years to write and perfect. Memoirs often take on a similar writing style as the personal essay does, though it must be personable and interesting enough to encourage the reader through the entire book.

Personal Essay

Personal essays are stories about personal experiences told using literary techniques.

When someone hears the word “essay,” they instinctively think about those five paragraph book essays everyone wrote in high school. In creative nonfiction, the personal essay is much more vibrant and dynamic. Personal essays are stories about personal experiences, and while some personal essays can be standalone stories about a single event, many essays braid true stories with extended metaphors and other narratives.

Personal essays are often intimate, emotionally charged spaces. Consider the opening two paragraphs from Beth Ann Fennelly’s personal essay “ I Survived the Blizzard of ’79. ”

We didn’t question. Or complain. It wouldn’t have occurred to us, and it wouldn’t have helped. I was eight. Julie was ten.

We didn’t know yet that this blizzard would earn itself a moniker that would be silk-screened on T-shirts. We would own such a shirt, which extended its tenure in our house as a rag for polishing silver.

The word “essay” comes from the French “essayer,” which means “to try” or “attempt.” The personal essay is more than just an autobiographical narrative—it’s an attempt to tell your own history with literary techniques.

Lyric Essay

The lyric essay contains similar subject matter as the personal essay, but is much more experimental in form.

The lyric essay contains similar subject matter as the personal essay, with one key distinction: lyric essays are much more experimental in form. Poetry and creative nonfiction merge in the lyric essay, challenging the conventional prose format of paragraphs and linear sentences.

The lyric essay stands out for its unique writing style and sentence structure. Consider these lines from “ Life Code ” by J. A. Knight:

The dream goes like this: blue room of water. God light from above. Child’s fist, foot, curve, face, the arc of an eye, the symmetry of circles… and then an opening of this body—which surprised her—a movement so clean and assured and then the push towards the light like a frog or a fish.

What we get is language driven by emotion, choosing an internal logic rather than a universally accepted one.

Lyric essays are amazing spaces to break barriers in language. For example, the lyricist might write a few paragraphs about their story, then examine a key emotion in the form of a villanelle or a ghazal . They might decide to write their entire essay in a string of couplets or a series of sonnets, then interrupt those stanzas with moments of insight or analysis. In the lyric essay, language dictates form. The successful lyricist lets the words arrange themselves in whatever format best tells the story, allowing for experimental new forms of storytelling.

Literary Journalism

Much more ambiguously defined is the idea of literary journalism. The idea is simple: report on real life events using literary conventions and styles. But how do you do this effectively, in a way that the audience pays attention and takes the story seriously?

You can best find examples of literary journalism in more “prestigious” news journals, such as The New Yorker , The Atlantic , Salon , and occasionally The New York Times . Think pieces about real world events, as well as expository journalism, might use braiding and extended metaphors to make readers feel more connected to the story. Other forms of nonfiction, such as the academic essay or more technical writing, might also fall under literary journalism, provided those pieces still use the elements of creative nonfiction.

Consider this recently published article from The Atlantic : The Uncanny Tale of Shimmel Zohar by Lawrence Weschler. It employs a style that’s breezy yet personable—including its opening line.

So I first heard about Shimmel Zohar from Gravity Goldberg—yeah, I know, but she insists it’s her real name (explaining that her father was a physicist)—who is the director of public programs and visitor experience at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, in San Francisco.

How to Write Creative Nonfiction: Common Elements and Techniques

What separates a general news update from a well-written piece of literary journalism? What’s the difference between essay writing in high school and the personal essay? When nonfiction writers put out creative work, they are most successful when they utilize the following elements.

Just like fiction, nonfiction relies on effective narration. Telling the story with an effective plot, writing from a certain point of view, and using the narrative to flesh out the story’s big idea are all key craft elements. How you structure your story can have a huge impact on how the reader perceives the work, as well as the insights you draw from the story itself.

Consider the first lines of the story “ To the Miami University Payroll Lady ” by Frenci Nguyen:

You might not remember me, but I’m the dark-haired, Texas-born, Asian-American graduate student who visited the Payroll Office the other day to complete direct deposit and tax forms.

Because the story is written in second person, with the reader experiencing the story as the payroll lady, the story’s narration feels much more personal and important, forcing the reader to evaluate their own personal biases and beliefs.

Observation

Telling the story involves more than just simple plot elements, it also involves situating the reader in the key details. Setting the scene requires attention to all five senses, and interpersonal dialogue is much more effective when the narrator observes changes in vocal pitch, certain facial expressions, and movements in body language. Essentially, let the reader experience the tiny details – we access each other best through minutiae.

The story “ In Transit ” by Erica Plouffe Lazure is a perfect example of storytelling through observation. Every detail of this flash piece is carefully noted to tell a story without direct action, using observations about group behavior to find hope in a crisis. We get observation when the narrator notes the following:

Here at the St. Thomas airport in mid-March, we feel the urgency of the transition, the awareness of how we position our bodies, where we place our luggage, how we consider for the first time the numbers of people whose belongings are placed on the same steel table, the same conveyor belt, the same glowing radioactive scan, whose IDs are touched by the same gloved hand[.]

What’s especially powerful about this story is that it is written in a single sentence, allowing the reader to be just as overwhelmed by observation and context as the narrator is.

We’ve used this word a lot, but what is braiding? Braiding is a technique most often used in creative nonfiction where the writer intertwines multiple narratives, or “threads.” Not all essays use braiding, but the longer a story is, the more it benefits the writer to intertwine their story with an extended metaphor or another idea to draw insight from.

“ The Crush ” by Zsofia McMullin demonstrates braiding wonderfully. Some paragraphs are written in first person, while others are written in second person.

The following example from “The Crush” demonstrates braiding:

Your hair is still wet when you slip into the booth across from me and throw your wallet and glasses and phone on the table, and I marvel at how everything about you is streamlined, compact, organized. I am always overflowing — flesh and wants and a purse stuffed with snacks and toy soldiers and tissues.

The author threads these narratives together by having both people interact in a diner, yet the reader still perceives a distance between the two threads because of the separation of “I” and “you” pronouns. When these threads meet, briefly, we know they will never meet again.

Speaking of insight, creative nonfiction writers must draw novel conclusions from the stories they write. When the narrator pauses in the story to delve into their emotions, explain complex ideas, or draw strength and meaning from tough situations, they’re finding insight in the essay.

Often, creative writers experience insight as they write it, drawing conclusions they hadn’t yet considered as they tell their story, which makes creative nonfiction much more genuine and raw.

The story “ Me Llamo Theresa ” by Theresa Okokun does a fantastic job of finding insight. The story is about the history of our own names and the generations that stand before them, and as the writer explores her disconnect with her own name, she recognizes a similar disconnect in her mother, as well as the need to connect with her name because of her father.

The narrator offers insight when she remarks:

I began to experience a particular type of identity crisis that so many immigrants and children of immigrants go through — where we are called one name at school or at work, but another name at home, and in our hearts.

How to Write Creative Nonfiction: the 5 R’s

CNF pioneer Lee Gutkind developed a very system called the “5 R’s” of creative nonfiction writing. Together, the 5 R’s form a general framework for any creative writing project. They are:

Write about r eal life: Creative nonfiction tackles real people, events, and places—things that actually happened or are happening.
Conduct extensive r esearch: Learn as much as you can about your subject matter, to deepen and enrich your ability to relay the subject matter. (Are you writing about your tenth birthday? What were the newspaper headlines that day?)
(W) r ite a narrative: Use storytelling elements originally from fiction, such as Freytag’s Pyramid , to structure your CNF piece’s narrative as a story with literary impact rather than just a recounting.
Include personal r eflection: Share your unique voice and perspective on the narrative you are retelling.
Learn by r eading: The best way to learn to write creative nonfiction well is to read it being written well. Read as much CNF as you can, and observe closely how the author’s choices impact you as a reader.

You can read more about the 5 R’s in this helpful summary article .

How to Write Creative Nonfiction: Give it a Try!

Whatever form you choose, whatever story you tell, and whatever techniques you write with, the more important aspect of creative nonfiction is this: be honest. That may seem redundant, but often, writers mistakenly create narratives that aren’t true, or they use details and symbols that didn’t exist in the story. Trust us – real life is best read when it’s honest, and readers can tell when details in the story feel fabricated or inflated. Write with honesty, and the right words will follow!

Ready to start writing your creative nonfiction piece? If you need extra guidance or want to write alongside our community, take a look at the upcoming nonfiction classes at Writers.com. Now, go and write the next bestselling memoir!

Sean Glatch

Thank you so much for including these samples from Hippocampus Magazine essays/contributors; it was so wonderful to see these pieces reflected on from the craft perspective! – Donna from Hippocampus

Absolutely, Donna! I’m a longtime fan of Hippocampus and am always astounded by the writing you publish. We’re always happy to showcase stunning work 🙂

[…] Source: https://www.masterclass.com/articles/a-complete-guide-to-writing-creative-nonfiction#5-creative-nonfiction-writing-promptshttps://writers.com/what-is-creative-nonfiction […]

So impressive

Thank you. I’ve been researching a number of figures from the 1800’s and have come across a large number of ‘biographies’ of figures. These include quoted conversations which I knew to be figments of the author and yet some works are lauded as ‘histories’.

excellent guidelines inspiring me to write CNF thank you

50 Great Narrative Nonfiction Books

Kim Ukura is a book lover, recovering journalist, library advocate, cat mom, and lover of a good gin cocktail. In addition to co-hosting Book Riot’s nonfiction podcast, For Real, and co-editing Book Riot’s nonfiction newsletter, True Story, Kim spends her days working in communications at a county library system in the Twin Cities area. Kim has a BA in English and journalism from a small liberal arts college in Minnesota, and a master’s in journalism from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. When not getting to bed before 10 p.m., Kim loves to read nonfiction, do needlework projects, drink tea, and watch the Great British Baking Show. Instagram: @kimthedork Twitter: @kimthedork

View All posts by Kim Ukura

This list is a collection of 50 great narrative nonfiction books, although it easily could have been much longer. A few caveats: I tried not to include straight autobiographies or memoirs because I wanted to keep this list focused on books that highlight strong research/reporting along with narrative voice. I also included just one book from any given author. If you’ve already read the book I’ve listed, most of these writers have an extensive backlist to explore. And, of course, this list of narrative nonfiction isn’t nearly comprehensive—that’d be basically impossible.

Book cover of The Emperor of All Maladies

The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee—An in-depth biography of cancer.

Being Mortal by Atul Gawande—Medicine, life, and choices about how we die.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot—History of the most prolific cells in science.

Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly—African American female mathematicians and the race to space.

Packing for Mars by Mary Roach—The strange science used to get astronauts ready for space.

Leaving Orbit by Margaret Lazarus Dean—“Notes from the last days of American spaceflight”

Annals of the Former World by John McPhee—Four books collected into one giant work on the geological history of North America.

The Secret Life of Lobsters by Trevor Corson—“How fishermen and scientists are unraveling the mysteries of our favorite crustacean.”

Global Issues

Night Draws Near by Anthony Shadid—A portrait of Iraqi citizens “weathering the unexpected impact of America’s invasion and occupation.”

Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo—Life in a Mumbai slum.

Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder—One doctor’s work bringing medical care to those most in need.

Without You, There Is No Us by Suki Kim—A reporter goes inside a school for the sons of North Korea’s elite.

Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick—North Korean defectors tell what it’s like inside the country.

Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi—Reading American classics in revolutionary Iran.

The Secretary by Kim Ghattas—An inside account of Hillary Clinton’s term as Secretary of State by a traveling journalist.

The Lonely War by Nazila Fathi—An Iranian journalist’s account of the struggle for reform in modern Iran.

The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson—The great migration of African Americans to northern cities and the impact it has today.

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand—World War II tale of survival after being shot down over the Pacific Ocean.

The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown—Olympic rowing at the 1936 Berlin Olympics (this book is amazing!).

Sin in the Second City by Karen Abbott—Stories from America’s favorite Victorian-era brothel and the culture war it inspired.

Eighty Days by Matthew Goodman—Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland race around the world in 1889.

In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson—America’s ambassador to Germany, and his headstrong daughter, in the lead-up to World War II.

Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann—A conspiracy against the Osage tribe and the birth of the FBI.

The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell—The Puritans and their strange journey to found America

Galileo’s Daughter by Dava Sobel—A look at the relationship between Galileo and his oldest daughter, a nun named Maria Celeste.

The Romanov Sisters by Helen Rappaport—A look at the fall of the Romanov family, focusing specifically on the lives of Nicholas and Alexandra’s four daughters, Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia.

City of Light, City of Poison by Holly Tucker—An account of Paris’s first police chief and a poisonous murder epidemic in the late 1600s.

Narrative Nonfiction Classics

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote—The original true crime nonfiction novel.

The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean—Obsession and rare flowers in the Florida Everglades.

Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer—The story of a harrowing, deadly climb on Mount Everest.

Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc—“Love, drugs, trouble, and coming of age in the Bronx.”

Friday Night Lights by Buzz Bissinger—The big business of high school football in Texas.

Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion—Essays on a feminist journalist’s experiences in California in the 1960s.

Newjack by Ted Conover—A journalist goes undercover as a prison officer in Sing Sing to better understand the penal system.

The Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi—Historical true crime on Italy’s Jack the Ripper, who killed between 1968 and 1985.

The Blind Side by Michael Lewis—A sports biography on one man’s journey to the NFL and the evolution of the game.

Social Issues

Book cover of Does Jesus Really Love Me?

Does Jesus Really Love Me? by Jeffrey Chu—A gay Christian looks for God in America.

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman—Cultural barriers in life and medicine (so good!).

Evicted by Matthew Desmond—Poverty, profits, and the eviction crisis in America.

Gang Leader for a Day by Sudhir Venkatesh—A sociologist spends a decade in Chicago’s Robert Taylor Homes to better understand the lives of the urban poor.

Homicide by David Simon—A look at one year spent with homicide detectives in Baltimore.

Another Day in the Death of America by Gary Younge—A journalist puts a human face on gun violence by writing about the 10 teenagers killed by guns on a single day in America.

Methland by Nick Reding—A look at the impact of meth on small towns, based on four years of reporting in an agricultural town in Iowa.

And the Band Played On by Randy Shilts—The first and perhaps most comprehensive look at the AIDS crisis.

Contemporary Reporting

Book cover of The Man Who Loved Books Too Much

The Man Who Loved Books Too Much by Allison Hoover Bartlett—“The true story of a thief, a detective, and a world of literary obsession.”

The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu by Joshua Hammer—A group of librarians banded together to pull of a literary heist to save precious Arabic texts from Al Qaeda.

Moby Duck by Donovan Hohn—“The true story of 28,800 bath toys lost at sea and of the beachcombers, oceanographers, environmentalists and fools, including the author, who went in search of them.”

Columbine by Dave Cullen—The definitive account of the Columbine shooting.

Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink—Life and death and medical malpractice at a hospital ravaged by Hurricane Katrina.

Tribe by Sebastian Junger—Learning about loyalty and belonging from tribal societies.

If you enjoyed this list and want more narrative nonfiction content, check out our True Story newsletter. Sign up here!

Louisiana HB 777 Would Criminalize Librarians and Libraries Who Join the American Library Association

Fellowships

Exploring the art and craft of story

Story Craft

April 3, 2024, 2024 power of narrative: double the power of your story with a braided structure, in a long feature story, two related or resonant threads can be woven to make a piece that is both complex and clear.

Madeline Bodin

Tagged with.

Miriam Espacio via Unsplash

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second of ourdispatches from the 2024 Power of Narrative conference at Boston University. For the first post, see deadline narratives by a Wall Street Journal podcast team.

By Madeline Bodin

Darby used a story from The Atavist by Scott Eden, “The Gilded Age,” is a 25,000 word investigative story about the international gold trade. (Our summary includes mild spoilers, but that doesn’t take away from what you can learn by reading it.)

Seyward Darby, editor in chief of The Atavist, at the 2024 Power of Narrative conference at Boston University

Seyward Darby Matthew Eadie of Boston University

Step one: Count your threads and identify the resonance . Resonance is the key, and I confess that I looked up the definition to understand how it applies here. It means an echo or reverberation that enriches or intensifies. Darby wants us to ask: If you thread these things together, will the story elevate to a place it otherwise would not? How are these stories going to speak to each other? Where will they meet?

In “The Gilded Age,” one thread, or the A Plot, follows two men from Miami and how they grow rich by ignoring the corruption of the gold trade. The other thread, or B Plot, follows Don Alfredo, a land owner and logger in the Peruvean rainforest, whose land is being destroyed by illegal gold mining.

A hint of the resonance between the two plots comes in the first transition between them, Darby said. Eden writes that Miami men did not know that the place the “gold came from had been transformed into a hell on earth.” Lack of curiosity plays a big role in the story.

Step two: Timeline or outline your threads . When you see the key scenes in the order they happened, you can see how the pieces might fit together. For example, because most of “The Gilded Age” A Plot takes place in Miami, when someone from the Miami men’s team goes to the Peruvean rainforest, it’s a place where the pieces fit together. Another place they fit is when an A Plot character falls asleep during a presentation about the dangers of illegal mining:

In late 2014,Renato and several coworkers attended a mining conference at a hotel in Lima. They sat in on a panel about illegal mining, but no one paid much attention. “It was kind of like the ASPCA commercial on late-night television where they show dogs with one leg,” said an NTR employee. For his part, Renato found the panel “ungodly boring.” As the presenters droned on about environmental destruction, he fell asleep.

Step three: Find the possible breaks where you can switch between plot lines. Using your timelines, look for the places where questions are raised or answered. Look for cliffhangers. The break should be in a place that subtly links to the next thread, but also leaves the reader eager for the first thread to pick back up.

Darby pointed to a section of the story where the Miami team is in peril after their supplier cheats them, leaving readers in suspense to go to another scene of fracturing, where someone is murdered in the rainforest:

With a group of Don Alfredo’s neighbors, Randy went back to the house. By then more than three hours had elapsed since the shooting. Puby, Don Alfredo’s estranged brother, showed up soon after. No one had contacted the police yet, though from Lima, Freddy had called an ambulance. Investigators finally arrived the next morning. A murder inquest was opened. Statements were taken. Because Randy was the only witness, he was simultaneously a suspect and presumed to be in grave danger. The killers might come back for him. Don Alfredo’s neighbors said they’d protect him. Freddy mourned, he ruminated, he raged. His thoughts turned to Puby. “I saw my brother dead. It seems like they put three bullets in the head and death was instantaneous,” Puby had told a local reporter. Puby was a gold miner. He’d tried to attack Don Alfredo with a machete. Was it possible, Freddy wondered, that his uncle was behind his father’s murder?

Step four: Play with the puzzle pieces . “I think of my work as a writer and editor as being a quilter who is figuring out how the pieces fit best together,” Darby said. Tools for this work include notecards or a whiteboard to list and rearrange scenes.

Step five: Tie everything together at the end . Leaning into the braiding metaphor, Darby said that just as a hair braid will only stay together if there is an elastic at the end, story threads should tie together at some point — although it doesn’t always have to be at the end. That can be as simple as characters meeting, or it can be a bigger revelation or epiphany. “It doesn’t have to blow your mind,” she said. “It just has to show that the time you spent with these threads is worth it.”

An early draft of “The Gilded Age” didn’t have that intersection, Darby said. But Eden did additional reporting and heard one of the Miami men’s (A Plot) reaction to Don Alfredo’s story (B Plot). It brought the two threads together literally and thematically. The piece ends with a child’s story that beautifully illuminates the story’s central conflict:

WHEN FREDDY VRACKO was a child—about eight years old—he wrote a story for school. He told me this toward the end of my first visit with him, at his mother’s house in Puerto Maldonado. He’d shown me old family photos of the home his father had built in the jungle—like something out of Robinson Crusoe —and of Don Alfredo in his thirties, standing in his sawmill amid stacks of boards planed smooth and ready for the carpenter. Young Freddy’s story was meant to be like a fairy tale. “El Asseradero de Oro” is the title he gave it. The golden sawmill. “It is about a man like my father who knows the jungle,” Freddy explained. The man is leaving on a trip, and before he goes he tells his brother: You must protect this enormous ancient tree, “because it is the spirit of the forest.” But the brother forgets what he has been told. He cuts down the tree so he can sell the wood. And when he cuts down the tree, the whole forest—“everything, absolutely everything”—turns to gold. The man eventually returns from his trip and sees what his brother has done. He takes his son on a long journey “all over Madre de Dios.” They seek out other spirits of the forest in order to ask for forgiveness. At last they find a “brother spirit” of the lost tree, which grants them their request. Bit by bit, the forest regenerates from solid dead gold “back to how it was.” But that’s the child’s ending. In this other ending—the real ending—the father is murdered, the guilty walk free, and as long as the rivers of money keep flowing, the forest can only be made of gold.

A braided or dual narrative means taking two stories that could almost stand alone and weaving them together, Darby said. Meaning comes from those two stories and the resonance between them.

Madeline Bodin is a freelance environmental and science journalist who is based in Vermont.

25 Non-Fiction Books We’re Excited to Read in 2024

Posted: February 22, 2024 | Last updated: February 22, 2024

<p><strong>WAS ONE OF</strong> your 2024 goals to read more? Or maybe learn something new? Non-fiction is the perfect book genre to open your mind and ease yourself back into reading. And with such a broad category of books, there's something for everyone. Historical deep-dives (perfect for someone who gets lost down Wikipedia rabbit holes), self-help books (expert-driven reads when you need advice), and everything in between all fall under this wide umbrella. </p><p>Reading books doesn't just give you a new hobby, it's also a way to become <a href="https://www.menshealth.com/health/a39983391/mentally-fittest-man-emotional-intelligence-vulnerability-resilience/">more mentally fit</a>. <em><a href="https://www.realsimple.com/health/preventative-health/benefits-of-reading-real-books">Real Simple</a></em> reports reading can help you relax, make you more empathetic, and may even decrease your risk of Alzheimer's disease. In a world where we're all tied to screens, there's no doubt it's great to take a break every once in a while and enjoy the tactile feel of turning the pages of a great read. And once you get into non-fiction, who knows? You may even take the next step and jump into a fun genre read like <a href="https://www.menshealth.com/entertainment/g46327790/best-sci-fi-fantasy-books-2024/">fantasy or sci-fi</a> (we've got great 2024 picks for those too, if you're interested).</p><p>2024 is another great year for non-fiction books. We've got science-based explorations of memory, various books on how to inject more positivity into your life, and even meditations on deer (yes, <em>deer</em>) to help you feel more in touch with the outdoors<em>. </em>And if you're a big pop culture nerd, there's also exciting books on music, movies, and sports that'll teach you the ins and outs of those exciting industries that fans (us included!) can't get enough of. </p>

WAS ONE OF your 2024 goals to read more? Or maybe learn something new? Non-fiction is the perfect book genre to open your mind and ease yourself back into reading. And with such a broad category of books, there's something for everyone. Historical deep-dives (perfect for someone who gets lost down Wikipedia rabbit holes), self-help books (expert-driven reads when you need advice), and everything in between all fall under this wide umbrella.

Reading books doesn't just give you a new hobby, it's also a way to become more mentally fit . Real Simple reports reading can help you relax, make you more empathetic, and may even decrease your risk of Alzheimer's disease. In a world where we're all tied to screens, there's no doubt it's great to take a break every once in a while and enjoy the tactile feel of turning the pages of a great read. And once you get into non-fiction, who knows? You may even take the next step and jump into a fun genre read like fantasy or sci-fi (we've got great 2024 picks for those too, if you're interested).

2024 is another great year for non-fiction books. We've got science-based explorations of memory, various books on how to inject more positivity into your life, and even meditations on deer (yes, deer ) to help you feel more in touch with the outdoors . And if you're a big pop culture nerd, there's also exciting books on music, movies, and sports that'll teach you the ins and outs of those exciting industries that fans (us included!) can't get enough of.

<p><strong>$25.20</strong></p><p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1646221346?tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C2139.g.46525368%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p><p>Those interested in nature writing, or at least how humans connect to the world around them, will enjoy <em>The Age of Deer</em>. Erika Howsare explores the constant presence of deer, interviewing animal control officers, a museum interpreter examining the history of deers, and even a woman who raises orphaned fawns.</p><p>Release Date: January 2</p><p><a class="body-btn-link" href="https://www.amazon.com/Age-Deer-Trouble-Kinship-Neighbors/dp/1646221346/ref=sr_1_1?crid=41XEPINX8QXL&keywords=the+age+of+deer&qid=1706632140&sprefix=%2Caps%2C59&sr=8-1&tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C2139.g.46525368%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p>

1) The Age of Deer: Trouble and Kinship with our Wild Neighbors

Those interested in nature writing, or at least how humans connect to the world around them, will enjoy The Age of Deer . Erika Howsare explores the constant presence of deer, interviewing animal control officers, a museum interpreter examining the history of deers, and even a woman who raises orphaned fawns.

Release Date: January 2

<p><strong>$27.00</strong></p><p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/031653675X?tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C2139.g.46525368%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p><p>If climate change has you worried about the future of the planet, check out <em>Not the End of the World</em>. This 2024 read will not only provide some uplifting news about the state of the world, but also offers guidance on how to create a more sustainable lifestyle and contribute to a better planet.</p><p>Release Date: January 9</p><p><a class="body-btn-link" href="https://www.amazon.com/Not-End-World-Generation-Sustainable/dp/031653675X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3RBB53ZEKNDH4&keywords=not+the+end+of+the+world+hannah+ritchie&qid=1706632418&sprefix=not+the+end+o%2Caps%2C74&sr=8-1&tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C2139.g.46525368%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p>

2) Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet

If climate change has you worried about the future of the planet, check out Not the End of the World . This 2024 read will not only provide some uplifting news about the state of the world, but also offers guidance on how to create a more sustainable lifestyle and contribute to a better planet.

Release Date: January 9

<p><strong>$25.20</strong></p><p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0316567027?tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C2139.g.46525368%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p><p>Rather than looking at aging as an emotional obstacle, what if you could avoid a midlife crisis altogether? <em>Learning to Love Midlife</em> wants to help readers see getting older as an exciting new chapter in life.</p><p>Release Date: January 16</p><p><a class="body-btn-link" href="https://www.amazon.com/Learning-Love-Midlife-Reasons-Better/dp/0316567027/ref=sr_1_1?crid=IDTGAMUARBVY&keywords=learning+to+love+midlife&qid=1706632606&sprefix=learning+to+love+midlife%2Caps%2C70&sr=8-1&tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C2139.g.46525368%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p>

3) Learning to Love Midlife: 12 Reasons Why Life Gets Better with Age

Rather than looking at aging as an emotional obstacle, what if you could avoid a midlife crisis altogether? Learning to Love Midlife wants to help readers see getting older as an exciting new chapter in life.

Release Date: January 16

<p><strong>$22.33</strong></p><p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/059372755X?tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C2139.g.46525368%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p><p>Chris Anderson, the head of TED (as in the viral TED Talks), wants to help the world become more optimistic. His advice? Be more generous. In providing various anecdotes, including his personal narrative of TED's increasing popularity, Anderson wants to prove that kindness and charity can lead to a better society.</p><p>Release Date: January 23 </p><p><a class="body-btn-link" href="https://www.amazon.com/Infectious-Generosity-Ultimate-Worth-Spreading/dp/059372755X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1YVYTV295MA30&keywords=infectious+generosity&qid=1706632844&sprefix=infectious+generosity%2Caps%2C73&sr=8-1&tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C2139.g.46525368%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p>

4) Infectious Generosity: The Ultimate Idea Worth Spreading

Chris Anderson, the head of TED (as in the viral TED Talks), wants to help the world become more optimistic. His advice? Be more generous. In providing various anecdotes, including his personal narrative of TED's increasing popularity, Anderson wants to prove that kindness and charity can lead to a better society.

Release Date: January 23

<p><strong>$27.00</strong></p><p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0593500822?tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C2139.g.46525368%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p><p>We at <em>Men's Health</em> are all about helping readers improve their sex lives. So of course we're excited about <em>Come Together</em>, which seeks to dispel myths people have about sex in relationships (sexual satisfaction doesn't have to wane over time<em>) </em>and examines the common obstacles that stops couples from having great sex lives, along with how to get over them. </p><p>Release Date: January 30</p><p><a class="body-btn-link" href="https://www.amazon.com/Come-Together-Science-Creating-Connections/dp/0593500822/ref=sr_1_1?crid=OLDI7STXNFKD&keywords=come+together+emily+nagoski%2C+phd&qid=1706633084&sprefix=come+together%2Caps%2C74&sr=8-1&tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C2139.g.46525368%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p>

5) Come Together: The Science (and Art!) of Creating Lasting Sexual Connections

We at Men's Health are all about helping readers improve their sex lives. So of course we're excited about Come Together , which seeks to dispel myths people have about sex in relationships (sexual satisfaction doesn't have to wane over time ) and examines the common obstacles that stops couples from having great sex lives, along with how to get over them.

Release Date: January 30

<p><strong>$22.48</strong></p><p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0593579658?tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C2139.g.46525368%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p><p>While <em>Come Together</em> will help you fix your sex life, <em>Fight Right</em> wants to help you fix how you approach conflict. When tension arises in your relationship, Drs. John and Julie Gottman want to ensure you stay calm and work to find understanding when you and your partner are at odds.</p><p>Release Date: January 30</p><p><a class="body-btn-link" href="https://www.amazon.com/Fight-Right-Successful-Conflict-Connection/dp/0593579658/ref=sr_1_1?crid=185J7G1F7BARO&keywords=fight+right+book+gottman&qid=1706633416&sprefix=fight+right%2Caps%2C76&sr=8-1&tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C2139.g.46525368%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p>

6) Fight Right: How Successful Couples Turn Conflict into Connection

While Come Together will help you fix your sex life, Fight Right wants to help you fix how you approach conflict. When tension arises in your relationship, Drs. John and Julie Gottman want to ensure you stay calm and work to find understanding when you and your partner are at odds.

<p><strong>$27.99</strong></p><p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1647825091?tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C2139.g.46525368%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p><p>If you've ever been called a "workaholic," this book is for you. Whether you're a manager or just a very stressed employee, Malissa Clark breaks down why constantly working is bad for both individuals <em>and</em> for businesses. </p><p>Release Date: February 6</p><p><a class="body-btn-link" href="https://www.amazon.com/Never-Not-Working-Always-Business/dp/1647825091/ref=sr_1_1?crid=26UONTF587OK2&keywords=never+not+working+malissa+clark&qid=1706633585&sprefix=never+not+working%2Caps%2C72&sr=8-1&tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C2139.g.46525368%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p>

7) Never Not Working: Why the Always-On Culture Is Bad for Business--and How to Fix It

If you've ever been called a "workaholic," this book is for you. Whether you're a manager or just a very stressed employee, Malissa Clark breaks down why constantly working is bad for both individuals and for businesses.

Release Date: February 6

<p><strong>$29.00</strong></p><p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1250280915?tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C2139.g.46525368%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p><p>While you may think your partner is the only friend you need, this book is set out to prove you wrong. Rhaina Cohen argues that not only are friendships important, but they should be considered just as important, if not more, than romantic relationships. </p><p>Release Date: February 13</p><p><a class="body-btn-link" href="https://www.amazon.com/Other-Significant-Others-Reimagining-Friendship/dp/1250280915/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1OG95V90P69EX&keywords=the+other+significant+others&qid=1706633764&sprefix=the+other+significant+others%2Caps%2C76&sr=8-1&tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C2139.g.46525368%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p>

8) The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life with Friendship at the Center

While you may think your partner is the only friend you need, this book is set out to prove you wrong. Rhaina Cohen argues that not only are friendships important, but they should be considered just as important, if not more, than romantic relationships.

Release Date: February 13

<p><strong>$32.00</strong></p><p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1635579627?tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C10067.g.45953859%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p><p><em>Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf</em> might tell one of the great stories ever captured on film (or seen on stage), but the story of how Edward Albee's play came to be a monster hit, and how Mike Nichols brought it to the big screen, is equally captivating. In this well researched and deliciously dishy new book, Philip Gefter explores the world that shaped Albee and how he used it to develop his great work, and follows the ups and downs involved in creating the film—Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton were just the beginning!—to paint an incredible picture of the creative process among some of the brightest minds of their time. </p>

9) Cocktails with George and Martha: Movies, Marriage, and the Making of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Deep dive into Hollywood history with this look at Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf ?–starting with the original 1962 play, then the 1966 film starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, and the story's lasting impact today.

<p><strong>$30.00</strong></p><p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1668017415?tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C2139.g.46525368%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p><p>Fasting is a fascinating part of our social, religious, and political history. John Oakes looks to examine how the idea of fasting (both in terms of food and in terms of more spiritual ideas of "fasting") have impacted humans over time, and how the idea of doing less overall can improve our lives. </p><p>Release Date: February 13 </p><p><a class="body-btn-link" href="https://www.amazon.com/Fast-History-Science-Philosophy-Promise/dp/1668017415/ref=sr_1_1?crid=OPE03KZLDXY&keywords=the+fast+john+oakes&qid=1706633949&sprefix=the+fast+john+oakes%2Caps%2C73&sr=8-1&tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C2139.g.46525368%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p>

10) The Fast: The History, Science, Philosophy, and Promise of Doing Without

Fasting is a fascinating part of our social, religious, and political history. John Oakes looks to examine how the idea of fasting (both in terms of food and in terms of more spiritual ideas of "fasting") have impacted humans over time, and how the idea of doing less overall can improve our lives.

<p><strong>$29.00</strong></p><p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0593418948?tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C2139.g.46525368%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p><p>It's easy to fall into pessimism and obsess over the worst. That's why <em>Practical Optimism </em>looks to give readers a way to cope during hardship, while maintaining an overall bright outlook on life. No matter what's getting you down, <em>Practical Optimism</em> wants to show you there's still things worth looking forward to.</p><p>Release Date: February 20 </p><p><a class="body-btn-link" href="https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Optimism-Practice-Exceptional-Well-Being/dp/0593418948/ref=sr_1_1?crid=13UI02DMVD9TH&keywords=practical+optimism&qid=1706634367&sprefix=practical+optimism%2Caps%2C76&sr=8-1&tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C2139.g.46525368%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p>

11) Practical Optimism: The Art, Science, and Practice of Exceptional Well-Being

It's easy to fall into pessimism and obsess over the worst. That's why Practical Optimism looks to give readers a way to cope during hardship, while maintaining an overall bright outlook on life. No matter what's getting you down, Practical Optimism wants to show you there's still things worth looking forward to.

Release Date: February 20

<p><strong>$27.00</strong></p><p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/038554863X?tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C2139.g.46525368%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p><p>Take a deep dive into the latest research on memory with <em>Why We Remember</em>. In addition to teaching you how to recall things better, the book explores the power of memory in our lives, and how we can, through memory, improve our brain's relationship to trauma, healing, and more. </p><p>Release Date: February 20</p><p><a class="body-btn-link" href="https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Remember-Unlocking-Memorys/dp/038554863X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=PY6CR4E93F74&keywords=why+we+remember&qid=1706634539&sprefix=why+we+remember%2Caps%2C74&sr=8-1&tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C2139.g.46525368%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p>

12) Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory's Power to Hold on to What Matters

Take a deep dive into the latest research on memory with Why We Remember . In addition to teaching you how to recall things better, the book explores the power of memory in our lives, and how we can, through memory, improve our brain's relationship to trauma, healing, and more.

<p><strong>$27.00</strong></p><p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0593243919?tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C2139.g.46525368%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p><p>Imagine yourself at work, stumbling through a presentation, frustrated you can't get your point across. Charles Duhigg's <em>Supercommunicators</em> wants to ensure nothing ever gets lost in translation for you again with this book on how storytelling skills can improve how you have conversations.</p><p>Release Date: February 20</p><p><a class="body-btn-link" href="https://www.amazon.com/Supercommunicators-Unlock-Secret-Language-Connection/dp/0593243919/ref=sr_1_1?crid=7ZH5WZCCXT3H&keywords=supercommunicators+charles+duhigg&qid=1707336902&s=books&sprefix=supercomm%2Cstripbooks%2C73&sr=1-1&tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C2139.g.46525368%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p>

13) Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection

Imagine yourself at work, stumbling through a presentation, frustrated you can't get your point across. Charles Duhigg's Supercommunicators wants to ensure nothing ever gets lost in translation for you again with this book on how storytelling skills can improve how you have conversations.

<p><strong>$26.09</strong></p><p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0593444620?tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C2139.g.46525368%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p><p>When your mental health takes a dip, <em>Languishing </em>is here for you. Corey Keyes' new book aims to reconstruct how we see self-help and mental wellness, while building up readers' resilience to get through hardships.</p><p>Release Date: February 20</p><p><a class="body-btn-link" href="https://www.amazon.com/Languishing-Alive-Again-World-Wears/dp/0593444620/ref=sr_1_1?crid=M0L5IWK9FL3J&keywords=languishing+book&qid=1707336921&s=books&sprefix=languishing+book%2Cstripbooks%2C62&sr=1-1&tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C2139.g.46525368%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p>

14) Languishing: How to Feel Alive Again in a World That Wears Us Down

When your mental health takes a dip, Languishing is here for you. Corey Keyes' new book aims to reconstruct how we see self-help and mental wellness, while building up readers' resilience to get through hardships.

<p><strong>$27.00</strong></p><p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0593544854?tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C10049.g.46333613%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p><p>There's so much focus on productivity these days, but what we're really doing is just focusing on volume and busyness. You know, hustle culture. But it wasn't always this way, and in his book, Cal Newport dives into how great minds of the past worked, producing quality over quantity, and provides a step-by-step way to shift your work mindset to a much more sustainable one.</p><p><strong>Release date: </strong>March 5, 2024</p>

15) Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout

Avoid burnout with Slow Productivity , a book that looks to teach employees everywhere that the key to doing your best isn't in working to your limit, but slowing down and changing your expectations. If work overwhelms you and you're eager for a change, you might want to check out this upcoming read.

Release Date: March 5

<p><strong>$35.00</strong></p><p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0525561005?tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C2139.g.46525368%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p><p>If you're a fan of music history, <em>3 Shades of Blue</em> dives into the creation of the jazz album <em>Kind of Blue</em>, made by three of the genre's greats–Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Bill Evans, along with many, many others involved in the project. Get an inside look into how great music is made, and explore the moment jazz reached its popularity peak.</p><p>Release Date: March 5</p><p><a class="body-btn-link" href="https://www.amazon.com/Shades-Blue-Miles-Coltrane-Empire/dp/0525561005/ref=sr_1_1?crid=22VE1436NF6WB&keywords=3+shades+of+blue+miles+davis&qid=1706717105&sprefix=3+shades+of+blue%2Caps%2C70&sr=8-1&tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C2139.g.46525368%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p>

16) 3 Shades of Blue: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and the Lost Empire of Cool

If you're a fan of music history, 3 Shades of Blue dives into the creation of the jazz album Kind of Blue , made by three of the genre's greats–Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Bill Evans, along with many, many others involved in the project. Get an inside look into how great music is made, and explore the moment jazz reached its popularity peak.

<p><strong>$29.99</strong></p><p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1324050233?tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C2139.g.46525368%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p><p>Daniela Rus, a computer scientist, answers all the questions you may have about the future of robotics and how it's intertwined with the future of humanity. This optimistic look at our technological future is great for anyone who loves deep dives into science.</p><p>Release Date: March 5</p><p><a class="body-btn-link" href="https://www.amazon.com/Heart-Chip-Bright-Future-Robots/dp/1324050233/ref=sr_1_1?crid=XLCGEJYA10KS&keywords=the+heart+and+the+chip&qid=1707336957&s=books&sprefix=the+heart+and+the+chip%2Cstripbooks%2C68&sr=1-1&tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C2139.g.46525368%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p>

17) The Heart and the Chip: Our Bright Future with Robots

Daniela Rus, a computer scientist, answers all the questions you may have about the future of robotics and how it's intertwined with the future of humanity. This optimistic look at our technological future is great for anyone who loves deep dives into science.

<p><strong>$35.00</strong></p><p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0593317378?tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C2139.g.46525368%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p><p>Baseball fans will love this biography of Pete Rose, who became one of the sport's great players and managers before becoming embroiled in a major betting scandal in the 1980s. O'Brien's book details Rose's career and his downfall from interviews with Rose, his associates, and archival records.</p><p>Release Date: March 26</p><p><a class="body-btn-link" href="https://www.amazon.com/Charlie-Hustle-Rise-Glory-Baseball/dp/0593317378/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3PV3KC6ZDDBIV&keywords=charlie+hustle&qid=1707338104&s=books&sprefix=charlie+hustle%2Cstripbooks%2C73&sr=1-1&tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C2139.g.46525368%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p>

18) Charlie Hustle: The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose, and the Last Glory Days of Baseball

Baseball fans will love this biography of Pete Rose, who became one of the sport's great players and managers before becoming embroiled in a major betting scandal in the 1980s. O'Brien's book details Rose's career and his downfall from interviews with Rose, his associates, and archival records.

Release Date: March 26

<p><strong>$32.50</strong></p><p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0063317443?tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C2139.g.46525368%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p><p>Want to improve your work-life balance and learn how to use your time wisely? Google's Executive Productivity Advisor (yes, that's a real title) provides actionable steps and advice for how to become the best version of you both at work and in your personal life</p><p>Release Date: April 2</p><p><a class="body-btn-link" href="https://www.amazon.com/Uptime-Practical-Personal-Productivity-Wellbeing/dp/0063317443/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3F3DPM3CK6DTV&keywords=up+time+laura+mae+martin&qid=1707338252&s=books&sprefix=up+time+laura+mae+martin%2Cstripbooks%2C66&sr=1-1&tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C2139.g.46525368%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p>

19) Uptime: A Practical Guide to Personal Productivity and Wellbeing

Want to improve your work-life balance and learn how to use your time wisely? Google's Executive Productivity Advisor (yes, that's a real title) provides actionable steps and advice for how to become the best version of you both at work and in your personal life

Release Date: April 2

<p><strong>$19.80</strong></p><p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0593714415?tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C2139.g.46525368%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p><p><em>Somehow</em> is a meditative look at how love impacts our lives. With anecdotes from her own life, Lamott offers a warming dive into how we all share affection, and provides lessons for anyone who needs to appreciate the love in their life more. </p><p>Release Date: April 9</p><p><a class="body-btn-link" href="https://www.amazon.com/Somehow-Thoughts-Love-Anne-Lamott/dp/0593714415/ref=sr_1_1?crid=19UG7YJ62XN08&keywords=somehow+anne+lamott&qid=1707338436&s=books&sprefix=somehow+anne+lamott%2Cstripbooks%2C63&sr=1-1&tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C2139.g.46525368%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p>

20) Somehow: Thoughts on Love

Somehow is a meditative look at how love impacts our lives. With anecdotes from her own life, Lamott offers a warming dive into how we all share affection, and provides lessons for anyone who needs to appreciate the love in their life more.

Release Date: April 9

<p><strong>$25.19</strong></p><p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1668007975?tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C2139.g.46525368%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p><p>If you've ever wondered how social media has changed how you see the rest of the world, <em>The Age of Magical Overthinking </em>is exactly the book for you. Montell explores how the Internet and constantly being online has made us chronic overthinkers and anxious, irrational beings. And, of course, she offers a reprieve from the chaos of the modern age.</p><p>Release Date: April 9</p><p><a class="body-btn-link" href="https://www.amazon.com/Age-Magical-Overthinking-Modern-Irrationality/dp/1668007975/ref=sr_1_1?crid=180H7OBGU1TJ1&keywords=the+age+of+magical+overthinking+by+amanda+montell&qid=1707338625&s=books&sprefix=the+age+of+magical+overthinking%2Cstripbooks%2C70&sr=1-1&tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C2139.g.46525368%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p>

21) The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality

If you've ever wondered how social media has changed how you see the rest of the world, The Age of Magical Overthinking is exactly the book for you. Montell explores how the Internet and constantly being online has made us chronic overthinkers and anxious, irrational beings. And, of course, she offers a reprieve from the chaos of the modern age.

<p><strong>$28.99</strong></p><p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1982190450?tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C2139.g.46525368%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p><p>Whether you want to climb Mount Everest or are terrified of heights, you'll find an interesting read in <em>Everest, Inc., </em>which charts the history of the Himalayan guiding industry, the sole reason so many people have been able to achieve the major fear of climbing Everest each year. It's an exploration of the unsung heroes of mountain climbing. </p><p>Release Date: April 16</p><p><a class="body-btn-link" href="https://www.amazon.com/Everest-Inc-Renegades-Rogues-Industry/dp/1982190450/ref=sr_1_1?crid=QLCJ1CN0F1YP&keywords=everest+inc&qid=1707338782&s=books&sprefix=everest+inc%2Cstripbooks%2C72&sr=1-1&tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C2139.g.46525368%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p>

22) Everest, Inc.: The Renegades and Rogues Who Built an Industry at the Top of the World

Whether you want to climb Mount Everest or are terrified of heights, you'll find an interesting read in Everest, Inc., which charts the history of the Himalayan guiding industry, the sole reason so many people have been able to achieve the major fear of climbing Everest each year. It's an exploration of the unsung heroes of mountain climbing.

Release Date: April 16

<p><strong>$19.79</strong></p><p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0385348746?tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C2139.g.46525368%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p><p><em>The Devil in the White City</em> author Erik Larson is back with another historical retelling, this one detailing one of America's most pivotal moments: starting with Abraham Lincoln's election and going all the way to the start of the Civil War. History buffs and readers looking to dip their toes into a nonfiction story for the first time alike will enjoy Larson's newest book. </p><p>Release Date: April 30</p><p><a class="body-btn-link" href="https://www.amazon.com/Demon-Unrest-Hubris-Heartbreak-Heroism/dp/0385348746/ref=sr_1_1?crid=14C03TN3JAYBX&keywords=the+demon+of+unrest+erik+larson&qid=1707338891&s=books&sprefix=the+demon+of+un%2Cstripbooks%2C84&sr=1-1&tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C2139.g.46525368%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p>

23) The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

The Devil in the White City author Erik Larson is back with another historical retelling, this one detailing one of America's most pivotal moments: starting with Abraham Lincoln's election and going all the way to the start of the Civil War. History buffs and readers looking to dip their toes into a nonfiction story for the first time alike will enjoy Larson's newest book.

Release Date: April 30

<p><strong>$30.00</strong></p><p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0063314045?tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C2139.g.46525368%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p><p>Casey Tanner is a therapist who's ready to hep readers reclaim their sex lives and relationships. In <em>Feel It All, </em>Tanner breaks down mythos about sex and relationships that have plagued us for far too long, and reveals how you can heal past trauma, redefine sex in your life, and find your way to deeper intimacy.</p><p>Release Date: May 14</p><p><a class="body-btn-link" href="https://www.amazon.com/Feel-All-Therapists-Reimagining-Relationship/dp/0063314045/ref=sr_1_1?crid=UVCIZ6ITAQ6W&keywords=feel+it+all&qid=1707341396&s=books&sprefix=feel+it+all%2Cstripbooks%2C74&sr=1-1&tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C2139.g.46525368%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p>

24) Feel It All: A Therapist's Guide to Reimagining Your Relationship with Sex

Casey Tanner is a therapist who's ready to hep readers reclaim their sex lives and relationships. In Feel It All, Tanner breaks down mythos about sex and relationships that have plagued us for far too long, and reveals how you can heal past trauma, redefine sex in your life, and find your way to deeper intimacy.

Release Date: May 14

<p><strong>$30.00</strong></p><p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1250279224?tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C2139.g.46525368%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p><p>This biography explores the largely unexamined life of Elaine May, the multihyphenate Hollywood star who is known for her reclusive lifestyle and impressive (but limited) resume as a director. Courogen pulls back the curtain on May's life and mystery, seeking to give the director, actor, writer, and comedian her long-delayed due.</p><p>Release Date: June 4</p><p><a class="body-btn-link" href="https://www.amazon.com/Miss-May-Does-Not-Exist/dp/1250279224/ref=sr_1_1?crid=UGK4P9X80BOF&keywords=miss+may+does+not+exist&qid=1707338975&s=books&sprefix=miss+may+does+not+exist%2Cstripbooks%2C73&sr=1-1&tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C2139.g.46525368%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p>

25) Miss May Does Not Exist: The Life and Work of Elaine May, Hollywood’s Hidden Genius

This biography explores the largely unexamined life of Elaine May, the multihyphenate Hollywood star who is known for her reclusive lifestyle and impressive (but limited) resume as a director. Courogen pulls back the curtain on May's life and mystery, seeking to give the director, actor, writer, and comedian her long-delayed due.

Release Date: June 4

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Author Interviews

Pulitzer prize finalist lydia millet publishes her first nonfiction book.

NPR's Leila Fadel speaks with climate change advocate and novelist Lydia Millet about her first nonfiction book: We Loved It All: A Memory of Life .

LEILA FADEL, HOST:

When Lydia Millet started writing her first nonfiction book, she was focused on animals, treating it like an encyclopedia. But as she continued, she shifted to capturing moments of understanding, exploring our connection to the natural world. In her new book, "We Loved It All: A Memory Of Life," which is out today, Millet takes us from vignettes about animals in the natural world to contemplating how to raise children and be a genuinely good citizen during multiple existential crises. I spoke with Lydia Millet about her writing journey.

LYDIA MILLET: When I read a book, I'm always most delighted when I come upon a moment that surprises me, that seems like a window opening onto something I didn't see before or recognize...

FADEL: Yeah.

MILLET: ...Or understand. And I really wanted to, in this particular book, try to make sort of a small tapestry of those moments, this sort of play of light on shadow. And so it was kind of natural, even more natural than it might be for me with fiction, to write it in, like, a stream of pieces that were, like, sort of stepping stones across a across a river or something.

FADEL: Across a life.

MILLET: Across a life, yeah.

FADEL: You have always written fiction. What was the biggest change about going to nonfiction for the first time?

MILLET: With fiction, you always have plausible deniability, right? You can say no.

FADEL: It wasn't me.

MILLET: Yeah, right. It wasn't me. That novel isn't really about me or my sainted mother or my terrible ex-boyfriend. And actually, often that denial is true. But with this, I wanted to write something unfiltered, where I played things as straight as I could and didn't pull my punches and wasn't afraid to be too earnest or too heartfelt. And so what had really preoccupied me in the background for decades was this question of how to raise children and just how to be a genuinely good citizen in this moment of multiple existential crises - you know, how all of us can stay hopeful enough to be forces for generosity and kindness in the world but not - you know, not Positive Pollyannas who tip over into passivity or denial.

FADEL: It's interesting 'cause you write about objectively depressing things - right? - the abuse of animals for human beings' needs, the strangeness of raising a human in the most intimate way, only to have them leave you because that's what the world is. But there is a love and a satire in the writing. How do you do that?

MILLET: Well, first of all, I've never been one to be able to read books that didn't have some tiny sliver of humor in them...

MILLET: ...Or cheerfulness. I think I can't help but sometimes reach for, you know, that moment of maybe it's satire or maybe it's just trying to mimic the sort of quiet wit that my father had or - but I always want there to be something to make us stand back, and humor does that, I think.

FADEL: Yeah. I mean, your books, and this book also, is so much about interconnectedness and community and our connections to nature. What happens when we sever our connections with nature?

MILLET: I think when we grow up, we're told by the culture and we even tell our own children, as we've been told by our parents, to put away childish things, and the love of animals has been seen as part of that realm of childhood. So very quickly as teenagers we go from being surrounded by animals - because, you know, animals are our songs. They're our clothing. They're our beds. We go really quickly from being surrounded by those other kinds of beings to putting up posters of celebrities on our walls. We go from identifying with other animals to idolizing and competing with other people. And I think if we reclaimed that love and fascination that we have for the others - not only animals, but also trees and plants and the landscapes they live in - what if we allowed ourselves to speak the love that we have for them and grieve for them when they're lost?

FADEL: So much about being a human is about being isolated, right? We're on our phones, and everything can be done without talking to anybody, without interacting with the world. I wonder how you think about that as you write this book that really does look at our interconnectedness and where we find community and the way we are with the world as human beings and what we've done to the world as human beings.

MILLET: Well, I think it's a kind of curious paradox, or at least a conundrum, because, I mean, technology clearly is so dangerous - right? - this Tower of Babel that proliferates seemingly infinitely and that alienates us from each other and from the rest of organic life, but at the same time can bring us so much closer. And it's also a curse. Like, having all this information is so overwhelming, and having all these stimuli and not knowing how to separate the real. So in a way, it can be paralyzing, and in another way, it gives us almost a form of omniscience.

FADEL: When you think about how to tell somebody what this book is about, because it's about so much, how would you describe it, and what are some passages and parts of the book that you look to and think, this is what I was trying to say?

MILLET: Well, first, it was about the animals, and then I understood that I wasn't really in a position to write an encyclopedia. It's more like a hymn or a prayer or some kind of sacred song. In a hymn or prayer, I mean, we have a presence within that, but it's not really about us. I want the book to be about those windows, the sort of moments of recognition and understanding that can suddenly crop up out of the background. I want it to be about maybe sometimes just being able to find, in the sentences, a glimpse of something you didn't see so clearly before.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

FADEL: That's Lydia Millet. She's the author of "We Loved It All: A Memory Of Life." Lydia, thanks so much.

MILLET: Oh, I was delighted to be here. Thank you so much.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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CANDY DARLING: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar, by Cynthia Carr

Never mind soup-can paintings and portraits of the famous — what Andy Warhol keeps on giving is books . He’s like Mother Ginger in “The Nutcracker” : Smaller people keep running out from under his capacious skirts to bow or curtsy.

The latest is Candy Darling, the transgender actress who succumbed to cancer at 29 in 1974 , after being immortalized in a famous photograph by Peter Hujar and in the Lou Reed song “ Walk on the Wild Side .” She had lived fast — indeed frequently on speed — died young, and left a mutable corpse, with considerable dissent among family and friends about whether she should be buried and eulogized as a man or a woman.

The first full-length biography of her, by Cynthia Carr, a longtime staff writer for The Village Voice — quite the Mother Ginger itself, of late — is compassionate and meticulous, reconstructing its brittle, gleaming subject as one might a broken Meissen figurine.

Born the day after Thanksgiving in 1944, Candy Darling was christened James Lawrence Slattery in Queens, soon moving to the ticky-tacky conformist hamlets of North Merrick and then Massapequa Park, Long Island, which she’d later euphemize as her “country home” but which was then an apparent cesspool of toxic masculinity.

Her father, John, was a cashier for the New York Racing Association who gambled, drank and was violent: the ultimate Daddy Dearest for a child with effeminate tendencies. Her mother, Terry, a receptionist and bank teller, was more supportive and loving — but still, hamstrung by shame. Candy’s half brother, Warren, babysat for her as a child but did not accept her as a woman.

As a child, “Jimmy,” as Candy was known then, was shunned socially and bullied terribly, once ushered onto a box and into a noose by two teenagers in a neighbor’s backyard. Understandably, she avoided regular school as much as possible; her education was in magazines, cosmetology and, of course, movies — she was a Kim Novak superfan, later emulating her.

She worked briefly at a beauty parlor, whose sympathetic owner she took on adventures like horseback riding. “We can always imagine we’re out in the wide-open spaces,” she said dreamily. “And if you imagine it strong enough, you will be.”

Like Ada Calhoun, the daughter of the art critic Peter Schjeldahl who took over his unfinished biography of the poet Frank O’Hara with sparkling results , Carr gets a boost from someone else’s abandoned legwork. Darling’s close friend Jeremiah Newton interviewed many of her intimates before they died — he features prominently in a 2011 documentary, “ Beautiful Darling ” — and shared copious photos, letters and the diaries that Darling began keeping at 13 (some previously published ). One is titled “The Worst Years of My Life.”

Carr spares us the ponderous establishing shots that weigh down many books of this genre. Though “Worst Years” covers the early ’60s, for example, the only mention of John F. Kennedy in Carr’s book comes via a fan taking a picture of Marilyn Monroe the night she sang for his birthday. Candy Darling was apolitical, the author writes — she had a wistful incandescence more than a “fire in the belly” (as Carr titled a previous book about the artist and AIDS activist David Wojnarowicz) — “yet her very existence was radical.”

She and the future Holly Woodlawn, another Warhol favorite, both toiled as file clerks and got out of the draft, Holly by showing up in hot pants and rouge; Candy by bursting into tears.

Stardom was Darling’s absolute raison d’être. You might argue that she was not only transgender but trans-era, longing to be a product and protectorate of the studio system. Alas, Warhol was no Louis B. Mayer, his films mostly art-house experiments — Carr is heroic at summarizing them — and when Darling finally gets to Los Angeles, for the premiere of his movie “ Women in Revolt ” (titled “Sex” at the time), the closest thing she gets to a break is broken promises from a drunk Ed McMahon needing roadside assistance. She does appear for about 15 seconds, uncredited, in the nightclub scene of “Klute, ” and for a while dated Roger Vadim.

Starring in Tennessee Williams’s late-career work “Small Craft Warnings” off Broadway was another high point — though even then neither the male nor the female actors wanted her in their dressing room, and she was consigned to a broom closet. She appeared in a Warhol-staged fashion show for Halston, but was only allowed to wear a maid’s costume.

Darling kept her chin up despite these humiliations, but again and again the rest of her body betrayed her. (Poverty and drugs didn’t help.) By 18, she’d lost almost a third of her teeth. She agonized about what she called “my flaw” — the pesky penis — but vacillated on what the publicist R. Couri Hay, one of those who eulogized her using the masculine pronoun, termed “the final cut.”

The massive quantities of unregulated female hormones she took, doctors and others thought, probably killed her — and yet dying young was in keeping with her fantasy of kinship to platinum-haired idols like Jean Harlow. Sardonic to the end, she joked that the presumed tumor hardening her belly was some kind of immaculate conception.

In a society ill equipped to accept her, Candy Darling’s short life was one of couch-surfing and cadging, which can make for some weird and grotty pages — oh, there’s a desiccated chicken under the bed. Many of those who remember her are unreliable narrators. But, as Carr notes: “All of them so delightful!” Bob Colacello, the O.G. Warhol chronicler, wrote that news of her fatal illness led to the only time he’d seen the artist cry.

There wasn’t really vocabulary to describe the territory Darling was exploring back then — maybe there’s too much vocabulary now, but that’s a different conversation — and her biographer extends a sure hand across the breach. To push her from the Warhol wings to center stage, at a moment when transgender rights are in roiling flux, just makes sense.

And you have to cheer when Tennessee Williams is asked by some rude person whether his star is a transsexual or a transvestite, and he roars back: “What a question to ask a lady!”

CANDY DARLING : Dreamer, Icon, Superstar | By Cynthia Carr | Farrar, Straus & Giroux | 432 pp. | $30

Alexandra Jacobs is a Times book critic and occasional features writer. She joined The Times in 2010. More about Alexandra Jacobs

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Defining Creative Nonfiction, Narrative Nonfiction, Memoir
In this post, learn the definitions and differences between creative nonfiction, narrative nonfiction, memoir, autobiography, and biography so that you know which genre you're writing. ... How do you know if your work is a memoir, biography, or narrative nonfiction? Biographies tend to be sweeping—focusing on the whole life. Memoirs tend to ...
Memoir, Biography, Narrative Nonfiction—How Are They Different?
Memoir is a story based on your life experience and what you have learned from it. It is a winnowing of all that has happened into a tight view of a slim section of experience: the coming of age years; the head-spinning start of a career; early motherhood. But always, it is a winnowing of the vast, complicated arc of events that has constituted ...
Biography
autobiography. hagiography. memoir. Costa Book Awards. character writer. biography, form of literature, commonly considered nonfictional, the subject of which is the life of an individual. One of the oldest forms of literary expression, it seeks to re-create in words the life of a human being—as understood from the historical or personal ...
Biography
A biography is the non- fiction, written history or account of a person's life. Biographies are intended to give an objective portrayal of a person, written in the third person. Biographers collect information from the subject (if he/she is available), acquaintances of the subject, or in researching other sources such as reference material ...
Understanding Narrative Nonfiction: Definition and Examples
Narrative nonfiction, also known as creative nonfiction or literary nonfiction, is a true story written in the style of a fiction novel. The narrative nonfiction genre contains factual prose that is written in a compelling way—facts told as a story. While the emphasis is on the storytelling itself, narrative nonfiction must remain as accurate ...
Memoir, Biography, Narrative Nonfiction—What Are They?
How is it different from biography, and how are both related to that thing called narrative nonfiction? Memoir is a story based on your life experience and what you have learned from it. It is a winnowing of all that has happened into a tight view of a slim section of experience: the coming of age years; the head-spinning start of a career ...
Nonfiction Biography & Autobiography
A nonfiction biography requires a biographer (the author, writing about another person), a subject (the person being written about), ... Narrative Nonfiction | Definition & Examples
Literary Terms: Narrative Nonfiction, Autobiography, and Memoir
Narrative Nonfiction. Considered a fairly new genre, narrative nonfiction (also called creative nonfiction) uses literary styles and techniques to write factually accurate narratives. Some recognizable narrative nonfiction titles include: In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, Into Thin Air by John Krakauer, and The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe. What is ...
What is Narrative Nonfiction?
By Stephanie Brown. Narrative nonfiction infuses true-life accounts with the storytelling techniques of your favorite fictional narratives. From mind-boggling scientific odysseys and eye-opening historical reports to nerve-jangling true crime investigations, the genre has something for everyone. But what is narrative nonfiction, and how is it ...
Life Writing
Summary. Since 1990, "life writing" has become a frequently used covering term for the familiar genres of biography, autobiography, memoir, diaries, letters, and many other forms of life narrative. Initially adopted as a critical intervention informed by post-structuralist, postmodernist, postcolonial, and especially feminist theory of the ...
Narrative Nonfiction Books: Definition and Examples
Narrative nonfiction, which is also sometimes called literary nonfiction or creative nonfiction, is a subgenre of nonfiction. This subgenre includes any true story that's written in the style of a novel. It's easy to understand this term if you break it down into its component parts. The first word, narrative, means story.
Biography Examples and Definition
The genre of biography developed out of other forms of historical nonfiction, choosing to focus on one specific person's experience rather than all important players. There are examples of biography all the way back to 44 B.C. when Roman biographer Cornelius Nepos wrote Excellentium Imperatorum Vitae ("Lives of those capable of commanding").
What is Narrative Nonfiction? Meaning and Types
Narrative nonfiction is a combination of fiction and nonfiction, so with the storytelling element, it should also be informative. The factual information should be gathered through interviews, diary entries, newspaper articles, historical reports, etc., in order for the data to be accurate and reliable. So, the writers should ensure conducting ...
Creative nonfiction
Creative nonfiction (also known as literary nonfiction, narrative nonfiction, literary journalism or verfabula) is a genre of writing that uses literary styles and techniques to create factually accurate narratives. Creative nonfiction contrasts with other nonfiction, such as academic or technical writing or journalism, which are also rooted in accurate fact though not written to entertain ...
What is Narrative Nonfiction?
A work of narrative nonfiction is a true story that is factually written— but reads like a novel. Rather than giving a journalistic, straightforward news report, narrative nonfiction offers a more creative and entertaining account of real events. In this genre, true crime stories read like thrillers, and important historical moments feel like ...
Genre Confusion: Memoir vs. Nonfiction Narrative
a protagonist (generally the author or the subject of the book), a character arc, fleshed-out scenes, and a story arc. In other words, both memoir and narrative nonfiction use fiction techniques to put the reader into the moment of the story. Think Seabiscuit or Unbroken, both of which required immense research but are told as gripping stories.
How to Master Narrative Nonfiction
Narrative nonfiction is often referred to as literary nonfiction or creative nonfiction, and these terms are used to describe true stories written in the typical style of a fiction novel. Some narrative nonfiction examples: Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand - the story of a real-life racehorse and its rise to success during ...
Your Life as a Narrative: A Guide to Creative Nonfiction
By Erin YooCreative nonfiction can sometimes be a difficult genre to pinpoint. It requires the use of traditional narrative elements as seen in any sort of creative writing, while also needing to stay true to real events from the author's lived experiences. To write in this genre, you must simultaneously be an author and a character, and striking the right balance can be a difficult task ...
Biography in Literature: Definition & Examples
A biography (BYE-og-ruh-fee) is a written account of one person's life authored by another person. A biography includes all pertinent details from the subject's life, typically arranged in a chronological order. The word biography stems from the Latin biographia, which succinctly explains the word's definition: bios = "life" + graphia ...
Creative Nonfiction: What It Is and How to Write It
Common iterations of the creative nonfiction genre include the following: Memoir. Also known as biography or autobiography, the memoir form is probably the most recognizable form of creative nonfiction. Memoirs are collections of memories, either surrounding a single narrative thread or multiple interrelated ideas.
Is The Biography A Work Of Fact Or Fiction? Musings From The Key ...
Biographies contain facts and historical documentation about the life of particular subject, and in this way meet the criteria for nonfiction. In a talk at the Key West Literary Seminar on ...
50 Great Narrative Nonfiction Books To Get On Your TBR List
Narrative nonfiction—also known as creative nonfiction or literary nonfiction—is usually defined as nonfiction that uses the techniques and style of fiction (characters, plot, conflict, scene-setting) to tell a true story. ... Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink—Life and death and medical malpractice at a hospital ravaged by Hurricane ...
Overcoming Misconception About Nonfiction Writing
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2024 Power of Narrative: Double the power of your story with a braided
Braid or weave together two stories that resonate with each other. In a talk at the 2024 BU Power of Narrative conference, Atavist editor-in chief Seyward Darby explained how how two narrative threads can be woven into a story that is greater than its parts. Darby used a story from The Atavist by Scott Eden, "The Gilded Age," is a 25,000 ...
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2024 is another great year for non-fiction books. We've got science-based explorations of memory, various books on how to inject more positivity into your life, and even meditations on deer (yes ...
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Piazza is a best-selling author and veteran reporter; her work runs the gamut between comic novels and nonfiction examinations of marriage and celebrity. With "The Sicilian Inheritance," she ...
Book Review: 'Candy Darling: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar,' by Cynthia Carr
Cynthia Carr's compassionate biography chronicles the brief, poignant life of the transgender actress Candy Darling, whose "very existence was radical." By Alexandra Jacobs CANDY DARLING ...

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Narrative Nonfiction Books: Definition and Examples

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Narrative Nonfiction Definition

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Which Genres Count as Narrative Nonfiction?

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (1965)

Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer (1997)

Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand (1999)

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi (2003)

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (2010)

Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly (2016)

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi (2016)

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann (2017)

I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer by Michelle McNamara (2018)

Facing the Mountain: A True Story of Japanese American Heroes in WWII by Daniel James Brown (2021)

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Difference Between Biography and Autobiography

Common Examples of Biography

Significance of Biography in Literature

Examples of Biography in Literature

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What is Narrative Nonfiction? Meaning and Types

What is Narrative Nonfiction?

Types of Narrative Nonfiction

Modern Media

Modern Books

What Makes Narrative Nonfiction Writing Good?

Balance Between Fact and Fiction

Author Presence

High Quality

Some Narrative Nonfiction Books to Read 2024

Brief Descriptions of the Nonfiction Books