Essays from William Jewell College's Creative Nonfiction Course

This series of articles features essays written by William Jewell College students enrolled in Dr. Cecelia A. Robinson’s Creative Nonfiction course. Students selected topics focusing on a range of pre and post Civil War pioneers, historic places, issues and interesting artifacts from the Clay County area. Photo: Dr. Cecelia A. Robinson

The National Endowment for the Arts recognizes creative nonfiction as the province of factual prose that is also literary, infused with the stylistic devices, tropes, rhetorical flourishes of the best fiction and the most lyrical of narrative poetry. It is fact-based writing that has foremost fidelity to accuracy and truthfulness.

While working in field sites such as the Clay County Archives, Clay County Museum, and conducting oral interviews with local residents, students learned to observe, listen, interpret, and analyze the behaviors and language of those around them—and then include the perspectives of others in their own writing. Conducting fieldwork also allowed the students actual contact with numerous individuals and cultures, often ones different from their own and provided the opportunity to develop a greater understanding of “self” and of their own biases, assumptions and encounters with a culture different from their own.

According to Lee Gutkind, novelist and filmmaker, “Creative nonfiction allows a writer to employ the diligence of a reporter, the shifting voices and viewpoints of a novelist, the refined wordplay of a poet and the analytical modes of an essayist.” Choosing research sites, interacting in the sites, investigating archives, and documenting experiences in writing brings the research and writing processes together. We hope that you will enjoy reading the following student essays.