I've written and published some poetry, but it's been over a decade. I started out in college and graduate school writing fiction, and I've come full circle. I guess it all depends upon how much trust we have in memory, even when it's jostled by research. In writing more journalistic forms of nonfiction, I would say the pleasure and the challenge come from finding a way to be creative without deviating from what your reporting and research has shown you. Speculate about creative nonfiction as an emerging genre in American literature.
Creative nonfiction is one of the most exciting forms available to young writers.
Writers like Mitchell, Ross, Capote, Kramer, McPhee, Talese, Kidder and Didion have shown that factual writing can be literature, that it can go beyound fact in its emotional and philosophical resonances but it always has a special claim on its readers - it happened. We seem to be seeing more and more innovative nonfiction. I'm not sure why. I have no apocalyptic theories to offer, but it might have something to do with the information age we live in - and our desire to see some of that information shaped into human form.