There are countless Narrative Nonfiction courses, tutorials, articles available online, but for some, having a book is still a necessity to learn. This is an up-to-date list of recommended books.
- You Can’t Make This Stuff Up: The Complete Guide to Writing Creative Nonfiction–from Memoir to Literary Journalism and Everything in Between (2012)
- Storycraft: The Complete Guide to Writing Narrative Nonfiction (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing) (2012)
- Telling True Stories: A Nonfiction Writers’ Guide from the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University (2007)
- For the Right to Learn: Malala Yousafzai’s Story (Encounter: Narrative Nonfiction Picture Books) (2016)
- Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania (2016)
- The Elements of Narrative Nonfiction: How to Write & Sell the Novel of True Events (2009)
- To Tell the Truth: Practice and Craft in Narrative Nonfiction (2008)
- Liberating Scholarly Writing: The Power of Personal Narrative (2004)
- Life at the Cell and Below-Cell Level: The Hidden History of a Fundamental Revolution in Biology (2001)
- US: A Narrative History, Volume 2: Since 1865 (2011)
- The Anatomy of Narrative: Analyzing Fiction and Creative Nonfiction (2012)
- Hedy’s Journey: The True Story of a Hungarian Girl Fleeing the Holocaust (Encounter: Narrative Nonfiction Picture Books) (2018)
You Can’t Make This Stuff Up: The Complete Guide to Writing Creative Nonfiction–from Memoir to Literary Journalism and Everything in Between (2012)
From “the godfather behind creative nonfiction” (Vanity Fair) comes this indispensable how-to for nonfiction writers of all levels and genres, “reminiscent of Stephen King’s fiction handbook On Writing” (Kirkus). Whether you’re writing a rags-to-riches tell-all memoir or literary journalism, telling true stories well is hard work.
Storycraft: The Complete Guide to Writing Narrative Nonfiction (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing) (2012)
From the work of the New Journalists in the 1960s, to the New Yorker essays of John McPhee, Susan Orlean, Atul Gawande, and a host of others, to blockbuster book-length narratives such as Mary Roach’s Stiff or Erik Larson’s Devil in the White City, narrative nonfiction has come into its own. Yet writers looking for guidance on reporting and writing true stories have had few places to turn for advice.
Telling True Stories: A Nonfiction Writers’ Guide from the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University (2007)
The country’s most prominent journalists and nonfiction authors gather each year at Harvard’s Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism. Telling True Stories presents their best advice—covering everything from finding a good topic, to structuring narrative stories, to writing and selling your first book.
For the Right to Learn: Malala Yousafzai’s Story (Encounter: Narrative Nonfiction Picture Books) (2016)
She grew up in a world where women were supposed to be quiet. But Malala Yousafzai refused to be silent. Discover Malala’s story through this powerful narrative telling, and come to see how one brave girl named Malala changed the world.
Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania (2016)
On May 1, 1915, with WWI entering its tenth month, a luxury ocean liner as richly appointed as an English country house sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool, carrying a record number of children and infants. The passengers were surprisingly at ease, even though Germany had declared the seas around Britain to be a war zone. For months, German U-boats had brought terror to the North Atlantic.
The Elements of Narrative Nonfiction: How to Write & Sell the Novel of True Events (2009)
Name some of the huge bestselling books over the years–“”In Cold Blood; All the President’s Men; The Perfect Storm; Black Hawk Down; Longitude; Jarhead””–and they all have one thing in common; they all read like novels. Author and agent Peter Rubie shows the reader how to join journalistic research with riveting, character-driven prose to create narrative nonfiction.
To Tell the Truth: Practice and Craft in Narrative Nonfiction (2008)
This text engages with current conversations in the popular field of creative nonfiction, which ranges across memoir and biography, the essay, and literary journalism. Designed to meet the growing need resulting from a burgeoning interest in narrative nonfiction, To Tell the Truth emphasizes key elements common to all three major branches of the genre.
Liberating Scholarly Writing: The Power of Personal Narrative (2004)
In this provocative volume, Robert Nash argues for the validity of an exciting, alternative approach to doing scholarly writing that he calls the “scholarly personal narrative” (SPN). The result of 35 years of supervising student papers, theses, dissertations, and publications, this practical book:
Life at the Cell and Below-Cell Level: The Hidden History of a Fundamental Revolution in Biology (2001)
The author’s biggest concern is that the association-induction (AI) hypothesis has not yet replaced the membrane-pump theory in high school and college curricula (Ling doubts cells have the energy to pump). He outlines the rise and slow fall of the membrane and membrane pump theories, and the growth of AI.
US: A Narrative History, Volume 2: Since 1865 (2011)
For your classes in American History, McGraw-Hill introduces the latest edition of , part of the acclaimed M Series. The M Series started with you and your students. After extensive market research to gain insight into students’ learning behavior and instructors desired course outcomes, we learned that students want text programs with visual appeal and content designed according to the way they learn.
The Anatomy of Narrative: Analyzing Fiction and Creative Nonfiction (2012)
Book by DEBORAH L. HALL
Hedy’s Journey: The True Story of a Hungarian Girl Fleeing the Holocaust (Encounter: Narrative Nonfiction Picture Books) (2018)
It is 1941. Hedy and her family are Jewish, and the Jew-hating Nazi party is rising. Hedy’s family is no longer safe in their home in Hungary. They decide to flee to America, but because of their circumstances, sixteen-year-old Hedy must make her way through Europe alone. Will luck be with her? Will she be brave? Join Hedy on her journey-where she encounters good fortune and misfortune, a kind helper and cruel soldiers, a reunion and a tragedy-and discover how Hedy is both lucky and brave.
Best Narrative Nonfiction Books You Should Read
We highly recommend you to buy all paper or e-books in a legal way, for example, on Amazon. But sometimes it might be a need to dig deeper beyond the shiny book cover. Before making a purchase, you can visit resources like Library Genesis and download some narrative nonfiction books mentioned below at your own risk. Once again, we do not host any illegal or copyrighted files, but simply give our visitors a choice and hope they will make a wise decision.
Valley Forge
Author(s): Clavin, Thomas;Drury, Bob;Washington, George
ID: 2658559, Publisher: Simon & Schuster;Thorndike Press, Year: 2019, Size: 33 Mb, Format: epub
Hidden Women: The African-American Mathematicians of NASA Who Helped America Win the Space Race (Encounter: Narrative Nonfiction Stories)
Author(s): Rebecca Rissman
ID: 3514215, Publisher: Capstone Press, Year: 2018, Size: 13 Mb, Format: epub
Tillie Pierce's Civil War Story
Author(s): Katie Marsico
ID: 3529496, Publisher: Lerner Publishing Group|Lerner Publishing Group, Year: 2018, Size: 5 Mb, Format: epub
Please note that this booklist is not final. Some books are really chart-busters according to Washington Post, others are drafted by unknown authors. On top of that, you can always find additional tutorials and courses on Coursera, Udemy or edX, for example. Are there any other relevant resources you could recommend? Drop a comment if you have any feedback on the list.