Ever since the term "creative nonfiction" first came into widespread use, memoirists and journalists, essayists and fiction writers have faced off over where the border between fact and fiction lies. An early and influential book on questions of form in creative nonfiction, Bending Genre asks not where the boundaries between the genres should be drawn, but what happens when you push the line. The expanded second edition doubles the first edition with 23 new essays that broaden the exploration of hybridity, structure, unconventionality, and resistance in creative nonfiction, pushing the conversation forward in diverse and exciting ways.

Written for writers and students of creative writing, this collection brings together perspectives from leading writers of creative nonfiction, including Michael Martone, Brenda Miller, Ander Monson, David Shields, Kazim Ali--and in the new edition--Catina Bacote, Ira Sukrungruang, Ingrid Horrocks, Elena Passarello, and Aviya Kushner. Each writer's innovative essay probes our notions of genre and investigates how creative nonfiction is shaped, modeling the forms of writing being discussed. Like creative nonfiction itself, Bending Genre is an exciting hybrid that breaks new ground.

Features in the second edition:
-Updated introduction to the new edition
-Expanded sections on Hybrids, Structures, and "Unconventions"
-A new section on Resistances
-50 essays in all

Table of Contents:

Introduction to the Second Edition
I. Hybrids
1. Why Some Hybrids Work and Others Don't, Lia Purpura
2. Queering the Essay, David Lazar
3. The Everbent Genre, Patrick Madden
4. Don't Let Those Damn Genres Cross You Ever Again!, Lawrence Sutin
5. Genre-Queer: Notes Against Generic Binaries, Kazim Ali
6. On the EEO Genre Sheet, Jenny Boully
7. Reading Samuel R. Delany, T Clutch Fleischmann
8. Beautiful Muddied Waters: On Genre and Veracity, Sean Prentiss
9. Listening for the Sound, Sejal Shah
10. Split Tone, Lee Martin
11. Lyrebirds in the Impasse, David Carlin
12. Headiness, Karen Brennan
13. What's in Your Purse?: Essays Through the Eyes of a Character Actor, Elaine Passarello
14. Propositions; Provocations: Inventions, Mary Capello
II. Structures
15. On Scaffolding, Hermit Crabs, and the Real False Document, Margot Singer
16. Text Adventure, Ander Monson
17. Adventures in the Reference Section, Kevin Haworth
18. Meeting the Ancestor on the Road, Tina Makereti
19. Autogeographies, Barrie Jean Borich
20. Dissolving Genre: Writ with Water, Ingrid Horrocks
21. "Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!": Courage and Creative Nonfiction, Brenda Miller
22. Traumatized Time, David McGlynn
23. Escapology, Justin Hocking
24. Play-Doh Fun Factory Poetics, Wayne Koestenbaum
25. A Sequence of Thoughts Without Any Kind of Order, Ira Sukrungruang
26. My Mistake, Nicole Walker
III. Unconventions
27. On Convention, Margot Singer
28. Losing Language, Camille Dungy
29. What the Bottles Know, Lina Ferreira Cabeza-Vanegas
30. 44 Tattoos, David Shields
31. Creative Exposition-Anther Way that Nonfiction Writing Can Be Good, Dave Madden
32. This Photograph is Evidence of You, Lawrence Lacambra Ypil
33. Ostrakons at Amphipolis, Postcards from Chicago: Thucydides and the Invention and Deployment of Lyric History, Michael Martone
34. On Fragmentation, Steve Fellner
35. Single Mindedness and Whole Heartedness in the Essay Writing Workshop: An Essay in Many Parts, Jenn Ashworth
36. Positively Negative, Dinty W. Moore
37. Study Questions for the Essay at Hand: A Speculative Essay, Robin Hemley
38. A Brief History of Disquiet, Deficit & Disbelief by FeiMan, Xu Xi
39. The Inclusivity of Metaphor, Nicole Walker
IV. Resistances
40. The Funk of Defiance, the Freedom of Refusal, Catina Bacote
41. The Essay as Resistance, Aviya Kushner
42. Prepositioning Resistance, Queerly Francesca Rendle-Short
43. Exposition as Resistance: Tell Me the Moon Is Shining, Matthew Batt
44. The Lyric Essay as a Mode of Resistance, LaTanya McQueen
45. It Is What It Is, Eula Biss
46. How It Is: Writing Towards Wonder, Jessica Hendry Nelson
47. On Not Being Able to Write It, Wendy Rawlings
48. Hermes Goes to College, Michael Martone
49. The Convex View, Karen Lloyd
50. The Moral Map, Stephanie Elizondo Griest