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from Issue 37
Essays from the Edge
$16.95








  ENLARGE COVER

  TABLE OF CONTENTS




Anyone still asking, “What is creative nonfiction?” will find the answer in this collection of artfully crafted, true stories. These stories—ranging from immersion journalism to intensely personal essays—illustrate the genre’s power and potential. Edwidge Danticat recalls her Uncle Moïse’s love of a certain four-letter word and finds in his abandonment of the word near the end of his life the true meaning of exile. In “Literary Murder,” Julianna Baggott traces her roots as a novelist to her family’s “strange, desperate (sometimes conniving and glorious) past” and writes about her decision, in The Madam, to kill off a character based on her grandfather. And Sean Rowe explains why, if you must get arrested, Selma, Alabama, is the place to do it. This exciting and expansive array of works and voices is sure to impress and delight.

Purchase this book alone or as part of the Best Creative Nonfiction box set.

on writing "Literary Murder"
by Julianna Baggott


I can't imagine handing over this very personal confession to fiction. Novels have given me necessary veils—to hide from the audience and to hide from myself. And I've found that I've learned a lot about the inner workings of human beings and my own inner workings because I could rely on those veils. But this essay is specifically about the moment when the veil is stripped away, and the writer must 'fess up to what they've done—fpr better or for worse. I also felt I owed my readers something. When you write a novel based on a true story as I did in The Madam, I think it's only fair to acknowledge—in some way—what is the deepest truth embedded within the novel, and where you've taken the greatest license. This essay was an attempt to do just that, but it became much more intimate and urgent in the retelling.