Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: Work from 1970 to the Present

by Lex Williford (Editor), Michael Martone (Editor), Bernard Cooper

From memoir to journalism, personal essays to cultural criticism - this unique, indispensable anthology brings together fifty unforgettable works from all genres of creative nonfiction.

Selected by five hundred writers, English professors, and creative writing teachers from across the country, this collection includes only the most highly regarded nonfiction work published since 1970.

Contents:

The fourth state of matter by Jo Ann Beard
Getting along with nature by Wendell Berry
The pain scale by Eula Biss
The unwanted child by Mary Clearman Blew
Torch song by Charles Bowden
Embalming Mom by Janet Burroway
Physical evidence by Kelly Grey Carlisle
The glass essay by Anne Carson
Burl's by Bernard Cooper
Visitor by Michael W. Cox
Living like weasels by Annie Dillard
Return to sender by Mark Doty
Leap by Brian Doyle
Somehow form a family by Tony Earley
Kissing by Anthony Farrington
The beautiful city of Tirzah by Harrison Candelaria Fletcher
Sun dance by Diane Glancy
Mirrorings by Lucy Grealy
Present tense Africa by William Harrison
Reading history to my mother by Robin Hemley
World on a hilltop by Adam Hochschild
A small place by Jamaica Kincaid
High tide in Tucson by Barbara Kingsolver
Small rooms in time by Ted Kooser
The essayist is sorry for your loss by Sara Levine
Mastering the art of French cooking by E. J. Levy
Portrait of my body by Phillip Lopate
Flight by Barry Lopez
The undertaking by Thomas Lynch
Sorry by Lee Martin
Interstellar by Rebecca McClanahan
Bad eyes by Erin McGraw
The search for Marvin Gardens by John McPhee
The date by Brenda Miller
Son of Mr. Green Jeans by Dinty W. Moore
Celibate passion by Kathleen Norris
This is not who we are by Naomi Shihab Nye
Autopsy report by Lia Purpura
Watching the animals by Richard Rhodes
Shitdiggers, mudflats, and the worm men of Maine by Bill Roorbach
Repeat after me by David Sedaris
Imelda by Richard Selzer
The Pat Boone Fan Club by Sue William Silverman
A measure of acceptance by Floyd Skloot
Black swans by Lauren Slater
The love of my life by Cheryl Strayed
Mother tongue by Amy Tan
If you knew then what I know now by Ryan Van Meter
Consider the lobster by David Foster Wallace
Hawk by Joy Williams

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction, Anthologies, Short Stories, Memoir, Writing, School

552 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

Reviews

[Shawna Finnigan]

I had to read a bunch of the essays and memoirs from this collection for a creative nonfiction writing class. I'm not going to leave a rating since I didn't read all of the pieces in this collection, but the only one I really enjoyed reading was "Present Tense Africa" by William Harrison. "Present Tense Africa" leads you on a unique journey through several different countries in Africa. It was eye opening and beautifully written.

[Isabella · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this for class. I want my time back

[Jacqueline Doyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I teach with this book and love the essays. My only criticism is that there are very few writers who aren't white. I have to supplement the readings with online essays. I wish they would do a second edition.

[Deb (Readerbuzz) Nance · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve been reading on this book, a dab at a time, all summer. It was the required reading for my personal essay writing class this summer. I went to look for it at B&N and it wasn’t there. I was happy to find I could download it, immediately, on my Kindle. An excellent use of my Kindle, as I could carry it with me to Utah and read it while waiting for an oil change and even just before I went to sleep. I had no idea the book had 576 pages; on the Kindle, all books feel equally light.

So what about the…what do I call them? I want to call them stories, but I suppose, for accuracy’s sake, I will call them essays. Brilliant. Writing so good I could almost see the sheen of the words on my Kindle.

But sad. All were sad. No happy stories. Nature in disarray. An unwanted child. An alcoholic dad.

That left me thinking, Are there no happy stories? Is it only the traumatic events of one’s life that people want to read?

I’ll leave that question, and just say one more time: These are excellent essays. Amazing. I want to read them again. And again.

[Makena · Rating 4 out of 5]

read:
Cheryl Strayed- The Love of My Life
Amy Tan- Mother Tongue
Ryan Van Meter- If You Knew Then What I Know Now
David Foster Wallace- Consider the Lobster

[alex caban-echevarria]

for my intro to creative writing class we read most of the essays for craft and to learn different units (showing, research, humor, sublime). i've written 6 pieces so far and will come out of the class with a 15 page portfolio of my work🫶

[em allison · Rating 4 out of 5]

i feel like i can't really review the whole thing because it's an anthology but i thoroughly enjoyed more essays than not; i think this anthology really encompasses creative nonfiction and the evolution of it throughout the decades. special shoutout to "living like weasels" by annie dillard because i LOVED that essay.

[LM Botha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent read. Some essays were 'dense' or heavy reading. But most were insightful, enlightening, and interesting. I discovered writers I had never heard of and whose writing I am actively seeking out. Worth the read.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this is my faborite of the CNF anthologies right now. I love Lex Williford's into.

[Leann · Rating 5 out of 5]

excellent resource for the best in short contemporary non-fiction. the essays range from harrowing and horrible, angry, seedy, alarming, uncomfortable, contemplative, out of control, menacing, to loving, sad, joyous, enchanting. what do they have in common? these essays are living, breathing works of art, and uncannily well written. highly recommend.

[Kelsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

There were some really great, inspirational essays in here that will stay with me for a long time.

[1.1 · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very strong anthology with many excellent essays, though at first the 'personal memoir' style was strong and had me thinking I would be turned off by overly intimate or sentimental pieces, the quality of writing was so excellent that I could not hold any objection for long. A few pieces fell flat for me, but that's bound to happen in a collection of this size. That said, there are many standouts that I considered particularly masterful, such as Jamaica Kincaid's 'A Small Place' - a sublime treatise on the question of tourism. The opener, 'The Fourth State of Matter' was also very strong, and there are numerous others that I found, which other reviewers have detailed - I believe any dedicated reader will find in this collection a few pieces that really speak to them, that might even be inspiring.

Some of these pieces were so good that I found solace reading them, which is really the ultimate sign of a good essay, in my estimation: someone else details experiences and troubles completely different from mine, writes them up in a style that I either can't or won't ever use (too shoddy, untalented, dumb, etc to use), on some level I find them reassuring, almost inspiring me to try a few essays. Almost, but with competition like that found in the pages of this book I might as well start a strict training regime and hope I make it into the qualifiers for the next issue. I'm not too hot on memoirs or even memoir-ish stuff, but some of these essays got me to reappraise that prejudice. This is really good, and I would highly recommend it, especially to 'the writer crowd', but more broadly to anyone who reads for the sheer pleasure of it.

[Tammy V · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book covers contemporary Creative Nonfiction (CNF) from 1970 to the present (present being 2007, the year of publication). My own obsession with CNF comes by way of lyric essays and, while there are a few in the book, the world as a whole had not yet taken them up. Perhaps it still hasn't as many in the class for which this was the textbook seemed unfamiliar with that subgenre.

My best take away from the book (and class) was the writing of Lia Purpura, here represented with her essay, "Autopsy Report." I immediately went out and bought 4 of her books to read and they have not disappointed.

Other writers included are Barbara Kingsolver (didn't buy the premise of her story, based on making a hermit crab from sound water into a land dwelling hermit crab - nope), Jamaic Kincaid, Phillip Lopate, Brenda Miller, Dinty Moore, Naomi Shihab Nyer, David Sedaris (sealed for me that I do not like his writing or the persona he portrays in it), Cheryl Strayed, Amy Tan, And Annie Dillard (to name a few you might know) Dillard and Purpura for the win with a close runner up by Moore's abecedarian essay.

If you aren't familiary with CNF, this anthology is a good start.

[Babette · Rating 4 out of 5]

An anthology filled with a great variation of short stories, a great introduction to the world of nonfiction writing. I had to read this book for my writing semester and I hadn't really read a lot of nonfiction short stories, so I was surprised and excited. The stories highlight different nonfiction genres, jump from themes and none of them feel the same. Highly recommend this!

I really enjoyed reading Return to Sender by Mark Doty, Portrait of My Body by Phillip Lopate, Repeat After Me by David Sedaris, The Love of My Life by Cheryl Strayed and Mother Tongue by Amy Tan and Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace.

[Courtney · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great selection. I wish it had a bit more variety of the different sub-genres within creative nonfiction, particularly flash, and the more contemplative, but overall really stellar essays here. I had a hard time choosing which ones to assign my students there were so many strong pieces.

[Jillian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two words: writer's envy.

[Grace Linde · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this for class--lots of good material! Each essay is its own, covering every genre of CNF. If you like true stories with powerful themes, you will enjoy these highly skilled writers.

[Kennedy Kaufman · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book I will keep close to me the rest of my life. So many good short stories, to be picked up and read at any moment.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

An eclectic collection of some good and not-so-good essays (in my opinion)

[Diana C. Kobylak · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book used as a textbook. This book contains nonfiction memoir and essays that both inspire and provide worthy examples of how to create for the emerging writer.

[Ben Truong · Rating 4 out of 5]

Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: Work from 1970 to the Present is an anthology of fifty essays, which was collected and edited by Lex Williford and Michael Martone. From memoir to journalism, personal essays to cultural criticism - this unique, indispensable anthology brings together fifty unforgettable works from all genres of creative nonfiction.

For the most part, I rather like most if not all of these contributions. Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: Work from 1970 to the Present is an anthology of some fifty essays from varying authors, albeit mostly Caucasian and range from harrowing, horrible, angry, seedy, alarming, uncomfortable, contemplative, out of control, menacing, to loving, sad, joyous, and enchanting.

Like most anthologies there are weaker contributions and Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: Work from 1970 to the Present is not an exception. In an anthology this size, it is highly improbable that every essay is superb, but this one comes very close. There are a few essays that are mediocre in comparison with the others, which hold the threshold rather high.

All in all, Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: Work from 1970 to the Present is a wonderful solid collection of essays about a varied experience by fifty very different people and how wonderful creative nonfiction can be when written rather well.

[Marilyn A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

started this book over a year ago as a part of a Nonfiction writing course that I was taking during my sabbatical. We had to read about five or six essays for that class and they were so good that I just kept going. I skipped around the book starting first with ones that intrigued me and then ending with ones that I didn’t think I would find interesting, but inevitably did. Creative nonfiction is a fairly new way of writing nonfiction. Instead of dry facts, the author uses literary techniques to make the words jump off the page. This anthology covers topics that are very random. The last one that I read was called, “Consider the Lobster”. I saved this for last because I didn’t’ think that I wanted to read about lobsters, but in the writerly hands of David Foster Wallace, I found his essay on the Maine Lobster Festival and the idea that maybe lobsters feel pain when they are thrown into pots of boiling water fascinating. One favorite was called “Present Tense Africa,” a series of vignettes about the author’s travels through Africa–the different countries that he visited and the common vibe they shared. Leap by Brian Doyle, his impressions of two people leaping off the World Trade Center, caused me to buy a whole book by this writer and share it at my book club. I recommend this anthology highly as a book to be savored–not to read in order, but to pick one for a small snippet of time to mull over and enjoy the writing and the thoughts that the writer has to share.

[Tom Schulte · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The poet presents his thoughts festively, on the carriage of rhythm: usually because they could not walk." - The Portable Nietzsche

It appears from the bios that "Creative Nonfiction" means poets writing elliptically about the saddest and darkest of topics: death, mental and neurological disorders, a pederast father, an assaulting pet, the after effects of promiscuity (Cheryl Strayed) and more. That certainly covers the bulk of the book. Toward the end, there are some exceptions like John McPhee seeking the "Marvin Gardens" from Monopoly. Don't get me wrong. This is affecting, moving material. Just apparently, at least to this editor, there is not much room for joy in contemporary creative nonfiction. Also, I keep hearing great things about David Foster Wallace, but his reportage of a Maine lobster festival dwelling on crustacean nociception left me "meh".

[Matt Sautman · Rating 5 out of 5]

While racial diversity feels underrepresented in this anthology, there is some great representation of writers with disabilities and gay writers in this, although I did not compile statistics to verify if the collection is actually as intersectionality diverse as it felt while reading it. The content of these essays is wide-ranging, including subjects such as language (“Mother Tongue”), discovery of sexuality (“Burl’s), and tourism (“A Small Place”). The collection overall is rather sizable, making it a worthwhile book for college writing teachers to have, especially since the content overall feels better honed than many nonfiction anthologies that I’ve encountered. Because these are all literary though, I will say that at time reading this cover to cover can feel a bit dense. Reading these essays in independent isolation though can make for powerful individual experiences.

[Abbas Mehrabian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like any anthology, there were essays that I loved and essays I didn't like much. My favourites, in no particular order:

1. The love of my life, in which CHERYL STRAYED explains how her life and marriage were upended after she lost her mother at 22.

2. Bad eyes, in which Erin McGraw explains dealing with her bad eyes, contact lenses, optometrist visits, and romances, with painstaking details.

3. Mirrorings, in which Lucy Grealy explains the deformation of her face due to cancer and her many surgeries to fix it, and the one year she didn't look at the mirror because she couldn't stand seeing her own face.

4. A measure of acceptance, where Floyd Skloot explains the difficulty of proving his disability to the government and getting social insurance.

5. Black swans, in which Lauren Slater tells her story of contracting OCD and trying out different treatments.

[Elliott · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of brilliant, touching essays from a variety of authors. This isn't a book to be read lightly, or a book to be read in one sitting. I would recommend it highly, but to be enjoyed and re-enjoyed in bits and pieces.
It's a strange fact of human life that we are obsessed with sadness. We love it, we seek it, we talk about it and most of all we like to see it in others. We are, all of us, voyeurs of tragedy, and yes, I know how obnoxious that sounds.
I say something so dramatic, aware of how much I sound like my middle school emo self, to explain why this book should be enjoyed in lovely, enlightening yet short intervals.
It is DEPRESSING. It's murder and cancer and illness and parents hating their kids and kids hating their parents and all of it is true and most of it is written by the person in pain. I needed a few days to get through Torch Song, a short essay that really shouldn't have taken me so long.
Is it beautiful and artistic? Yes. Is it also gut-wrenchingly tragic? Absolutely.
Read this book and enjoy these essays, but enjoy them in snippets: short and lovely and painful.

[Jake · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely incredible collection of essays. Nearly every one is amazing. This would be a collection worth buying, because each essay is so wildly touching, insightful, intense, unique, and thought-provoking. I'm really glad I read this, and I'm looking forward to reading another collection of creative non-fiction.

[Artemis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lots of good essays here, I especially enjoyed:

- Somehow Form A Family by Tony Earley
- The Love of My Life by Cheryl Strayed
- If You Knew then What I Know Now by Ryan Van Meter
- Interstellar by Rebecca McClanahan
- World on a Hilltop by Adam Hochschild
- The Pat Boone Fan Club by Sue William Silverman

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title says it all. This is a book for anyone with even a passing interest in these kinds of essays. Extremely well done, representative of the genre, and curated to include writers more famous for their fiction.

[Taylor Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

An engaging collection of powerful, thought-provoking essays that occasionally touch on hard issues. There is an effective mixture of fun, simple essay to dark, deep essays with many styles and formats within. Enjoyable and a great buy 🙌