The genre Creative Nonfiction has many different definitions and views. According to Bruce Dobler's Creative Nonfiction Compendium, creative nonfiction is that branch of writing which employs literary techniques and artistic vision usually associated with fiction or poetry to report on actual persons and events. Though only recently identified and taught as a distinct and separate literary genre, the roots of creative nonfiction run deeply into literary tradition and history. The genre, as currently defined, is broad enough to include nature and travel writing, the personal memoir and essay, as well as new journalism, gonzo journalism, and the nonfiction novel.
A man named Lee Gutkind, (who can be seen in the picture above) from the Creative Nonfiction Journal website, shared his view on what creative nonfiction actually was. He said that “I don’t know who actually coined the term creative nonfiction. As far as I know, nobody knows, exactly. I have been using it since the 1970s, although if we were to pinpoint a time when the term became “official,” it would be 1983, at a meeting convened by the National Endowment for the Arts to deal with the question of what, exactly, to call the genre as a category for the NEA’s creative writing fellowships. Initially, the fellowships bestowed grant money ($7,500 at the time; today, $20,000) to poets and fiction writers only, although the NEA had long recognized the “art” of nonfiction and been trying to find a way to describe the category so writers would understand what kind of work to submit for consideration”.
Another explanation and definition of creative nonfiction according to the website of the Creative Nonfiction Journal, the genre precisely describes what the form is all about. The word “creative” refers simply to the use of literary craft in presenting nonfiction that is, factually accurate prose about real people and events in a compelling, vivid manner. To put it another way, creative nonfiction writers do not make things up; they make ideas and information that already exist more interesting and, often, more accessible.
This general meaning of the term is basically acknowledged and accepted in the literary world; poets, fiction writers, the creative writing community in general understand and accept the elements of creative nonfiction, although their individual interpretation of the genre’s boundaries may differ. The essential point to acknowledge here is that there are lines and real demarcation points between fiction, which is or can be mostly imagination; traditional nonfiction (journalism and scholarship), which is mostly information; and creative nonfiction, which presents or treats information using the tools of the fiction writer while maintaining allegiance to fact. (Creative Nonfiction Journal Website, Lee Gutkind)
Creative nonfiction is not the same as an essay or a journalism type of style. Even though some people believe that they are similar, the concepts are different and that is why creative nonfiction is now its own genre. Lee Gutkind also stated that an “essay is the term used to describe this “artful” nonfiction, but it didn’t really capture the essence of the genre for the NEA or lots of other folks experimenting in the field. Technically, scholars, critics, and academics of all sorts, as well as newspaper op-ed reporters, were writing “essays,” although that was not the kind of work the NEA had in mind. Journalism didn’t fit the category, either, although the anchoring element of the best creative nonfiction requires an aspect of reportage. For a while the NEA experimented with “belles-lettres,” a misunderstood term that favors style over substance and did not capture the personal essence and foundation of the literature they were seeking. Eventually one of the NEA members in the meeting that day pointed out that a rebel in his English department was campaigning for the term “creative nonfiction.” That rebel was none other than Lee Gutkind.
