NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines

Creative Nonfiction

Publisher’s Description: Creative Nonfiction is the voice of the genre. Every issue is packed with new essays by established and emerging writers, notes on craft, interviews with editors and writers to watch, and much more. Occasional themed issues demonstrate the editors' belief that true stories, well told, can make any topic compelling and relevant. An annual Best Creative Nonfiction issue, also published as a book by W. W. Norton, features exceptional work from literary blogs, little magazines, and other exciting, out-of-the-way publications. Simply put, CNF strives to demonstrate the depth and versatility of the genre it helped define.

Featured writers include John McPhee, Gay Talese, Annie Dillard, Richard Rodriguez, Diane Ackerman, Andre Codrescu, Lauren Slater, John Edgar Wideman, Charles Simic, Terry Tempest Williams and Floyd Skloot. Editor Lee Gutkind was proclaimed “Godfather behind creative nonfiction” by Vanity Fair.

"Simply great essays by talented writers." - Library Journal

Recent issues:

Issue 37: Best Creative Nonfiction 3 - Anyone still asking, “What is creative nonfiction?” will find the answer in this 3rd annual collection of artfully crafted, true stories. Ranging from immersion journalism to intensely personal essays, they illustrate the genre’s power and potential. Edwidge Danticat recalls an uncle’s love of a certain four-letter word and finds in his abandonment of it near the end of his life the true meaning of exile. 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.

Issue 36: First Lede, Real Lead - Explaining war to a child; the phases of the moon; ghosts of an insane asylum; prospecting for gold in New Hampshire; reclaiming the land; and more. Also in this issue, a look inside the revision and editorial processes: what if an essay's first beginning isn't its best beginning? We eliminated the original openings of three essays and started them a few paragraphs or pages later. Did these changes, in fact, make the stories more effective? And what, if anything, was lost in the editing process? Read what the authors have to say and join an online discussion.

Issue 34: Anatomy of Baseball - This all-star collection of essays about the great American pastime dissects the game one element at a time. Sean Wilentz, Frank Deford, John Thorn, Katherine A. Powers and others try to get at why we find ourselves in the stands or on the field, season after season. Plus, we learn what made Elizabeth Bobrick become a writer; talk with Michelle Wildgen, senior editor of Tin House; and take a quick tour of the lyric essay with Dinty W. Moore.