English 3600—Advanced Composition

San Luis Diaries—Creative Nonfiction.  Writing our travels and origins in a roundtable workshop. Some writers have written that we do not see our own country clearly till we see it from a distance.  And we may see ourselves differently when we encounter a new country.   Students write a series of narrative journal entries, describing and interpreting their Costa Rican experiences from the perspective of their American cultural origins.

Creative nonfiction “offers flexibility and freedom while adhering to the basic tenets of reportage. In creative nonfiction, writers can be poetic and journalistic simultaneously. Creative nonfiction writers are encouraged to utilize literary and even cinematic techniques, from scene to dialogue to description to point of view, to write about themselves and others, capturing real people and real life in ways that can and have changed the world. What is most important and enjoyable about creative nonfiction is that it not only allows but also encourages the writer to become a part of the story or essay being written” (Editor Lee Gutkind, CNF ).

From: http://www.creativenonfiction.org/thejournal/whatiscnf.htm

Course readings:
Selections from issues of the journal, Creative Nonfiction.
Selected writings of writing students, UGA-Costa Rica, spring, 2008.

Examples of Creative Nonfiction

             “The evening of the second day, on the green slope of our hotel, I'm sitting in a lawn chair that could have come from Wal-Mart.  I've screwed on my wide-angle lens, charged my iPod, and iced my drink. Fully visible in the dimming light, the cone mountain grows slowly darker, backlit by the western setting sun.  Then, as the sun drops below the clouds, the northwestern slope begins to glow dully, like tarnished, fading brass.  Cezanne painted countless haystacks in subtly changing light.  O'Keefe painted New Mexican mountains in innumerable shades of gray.”  —Tom Vander Ven, from “At the Arenal Volcano,” Franklin College, Costa Rica, Spring, 2008.

“In the dim light, his dark skin and thick, black hair obscure his face. He's small, thin, and stands very still.  He may be twenty. Or thirty.  He begins in a light, clear, polite voice, saying that he needs a job, that he's lost his passport.  He wears a green and white soccer shirt, jeans, and carries a nylon bag.  Over his shoulder on the other side of the street, an ant-line of red taxis crawls into the night.  In the Restaurante Quepoa, a few people linger at dim tables.  On stools at the counter, a man sits with a woman with long, blond hair, her head down on her arms.  On the sidewalk in front of the restaurant, a man stands, a long police club hanging from his belt.  On the back of his white shirt, SEGURIDAD.”  —Tom Vander Ven, from “Why Are You Like That?” Quepos, Costa Rica, June, 2008.