Going along with our mission of educating and informing those interested in reading and writing creative nonfiction, we’ve compiled a list of creative nonfiction and general writing and lit mag resources, books about writing creative nonfiction, as well as other publications, podcasts, and articles dedicated to the craft of creative nonfiction.
If you have a suggestion for this page, by all means, let us know. We’ll check it out and, if we feel it fits, we’ll add it to our list of resources for writers.
Creative Nonfiction Literary Magazines
Aside from your truly (Hippocampus Magazine!), these are a few online and print literary journals that publish creative nonfiction exclusively:
Blogs, Websites & Other Online Pubs Dedicated (Mostly) to Creative Nonfiction Writing and Publishing
- Assay: A Journal of Creative Nonfiction Studies
- The Brevity Blog – new content almost daily, including industry news, guest posts from a variety of writers, reviews and some humor
(There are countless writing-related blogs and websites, too exhausting to list here, so we’ve hand-picked a few with a CNF bent.)
Books About Writing Creative Nonfiction
…Plus a few non-genre-specific ones we love, as well as some on submitting. This is by no means an exhaustive list of books about writing memoir and essay; just a few favorites that came to mind.
- The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr
- The Art of the Personal Essay by Phillip Lopate
- Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott
- Crafting the Personal Essay: A Guide for Writing and Publishing Creative Nonfiction by Dinty W. Moore
- Get Published in Literary Magazines: The Indispensable Guide to Preparing, Submitting and Writing Better by Allison K Williams
- Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir by Beth Kephart
- The Memoir Project by Marion Roach Smith
- On Writing by Stephen King
- On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction by William Zinsser
- The Story Cure: A Book Doctor’s Guide to Finishing Your Novel or Memoir by Dinty W. Moore
- Tell It Slant (3rd Edition) by Brenda Miller and Suzanne Paola
- Writing Hard Stories: Celebrated Memoirists Who Shaped Art from Trauma by Melanie Brooks
- You Can’t Make This Stuff Up by Lee Gutkind
- Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury
And, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention our own book (which didn’t exist when we first made this page in 2018, but we’ll add it now): Getting to the Truth: The Craft and Practice of Creative Nonfiction, a CNF craft anthology edited by Donna Talarico and Rae Pagliarulo.
(note: the links in this sections are affiliate links.)
Creative Nonfiction-Related Podcasts
We also included a few (true) storytelling ones to this list!
Literary Magazine Market (and Other) Listings
These websites give you access to literary magazine listings and call for submissions.We also included a classic book (because, in a day of information overload, we feel sitting down with a good ‘ol reference book is refreshing and inspiring.)
- ChillSubs – a new, user-focused lit mag directory (and so much more)
- Duotrope (requires membership, but incredibly valuable and worth it!)
- NewPages
- Poets & Writers
- Writers Market (2018 edition)