Welcome

Welcome to EN209, Introduction to Creative Nonfiction. I am Donna Decker, your professor for this, the inaugural section of this course. This is our course blog, and it will serve several functions.

We will consider it our central meeting place, alongside our classroom. Here we will post significant updates, news, links -- anything that is of interest to our class regarding creative nonfiction.

For example, I am using this space right now to tell you about a book I want you all to read. I have not assigned it because it is still available only in hardcover, and I try to consider text cost when I order books. The book is A LONG WAY GONE by Ishmael Beah. It is the memoir of a boy soldier from Sierra Leone. Beah wrote it after he left SL and began studying at Oberlin College. He wrote the book in a class like the one you are in now. It is a painful book, beautifully written, honest, heartbreaking.

Many new memoirs are on the market now, many of them so new, like the one above, that they are also in hardcover. So, here is what we will do. Each student will pick a memoir to read. You can borrow one from the FPU library. I wil post a list of suggestions here, but you can feel free to choose your own. Bring your chosen memoir to class on Day #2; that is, bring the actual text to class that day.

You should check the blog between class meetings, in case there are updates, spontaneous assignments, important last-minute notices of events.

I look forward to our semester together. We will read and write and explore -- a lot.