This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations .(July 2019) |
Lauren Kessler | |
---|---|
Occupation |
|
Nationality | American |
Education | Northwestern University (BSJ) University of Oregon (MS) University of Washington (PhD) |
Genre | Non-fiction |
Website | |
www |
Lauren Kessler is an American author, and immersion journalist who specializes in narrative nonfiction. She teaches storytelling for social change at the University of Washington and for the Forum of Journalism and Media in Vienna.
Lauren Kessler's education includes Ph.D., University of Washington; M.S., University of Oregon, and B.S.J., Northwestern University.
Kessler is the author of eleven works of narrative nonfiction including 2023 Oregon Book Award-winner, Free: Two Years, Six Lives, and the Long Journey Home" (Sourcebooks, 2022), A Grip of Time: When prison is your life (Red Lightning Books, 2019), Raising the Barre: Big Dreams, False Starts and My Midlife Quest to Dance The Nutcracker (Da Capo Press, 2015); Counterclockwise: My Year of Hypnosis, Hormones and Other Adventures in the World of Anti-Aging (Rodale, Inc., Emmaus, Pennsylvania, 2013); and My Teenage Werewolf: A Mother, A Daughter, A Journey Through the Thicket of Adolescence (Penguin Books, 2011).
Her book, Dancing with Rose (renamed Finding Life in the Land of Alzheimer's in its paperback edition), won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award and was named a Best Book of the Year by Library Journal. Her Oregon Book Award-winning book, Stubborn Twig, was chosen to be the statewide "Oregon Reads" selection in celebration of the state's 150th birthday.
Kessler is also author of Washington Post best-seller Clever Girl: Elizabeth Bentley, the Spy Who Ushered in the McCarthy Era, a biography of Elizabeth Bentley, [1] [ failed verification ] and the Los Angeles Times best-seller and Oregon Book Award finalist The Happy Bottom Riding Club , a biography of aviator Florence Pancho Barnes. David Letterman, in playful competition with Oprah, chose The Happy Bottom Riding Club as the first (and only) book for "Dave's Book Club." Kessler appeared on his show twice.
Kessler's journalism and essays have appeared in The New York Times Magazine , the Los Angeles Times Magazine , O, The Oprah Magazine , Ladies' Home Journal , Woman's Day , Prevention , Newsweek , Salon.com , The Nation , Nieman Storyboard, Writer's Digest and farmer-ish. Many of her essays on writing are compiled in The Write Path: Essays on the Art of Writing and the Joy of Reading (Monroe Press, 2015). She writes a weekly essay, published at Lauren Chronicles on her author site, laurenkessler.com
She was inducted into the Alumni Hall of Fame (University of Washington) and the Hall of Achievement (University of Oregon).
Creative nonfiction is a genre of writing that uses literary styles and techniques to create factually accurate narratives. Creative nonfiction contrasts with other nonfiction, such as academic or technical writing or journalism, which are also rooted in accurate fact though not written to entertain based on prose style. Many writers view creative nonfiction as overlapping with the essay.
Katherine Kelley is an American journalist and author of best-selling unauthorized biographies of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra, Nancy Reagan, the British royal family, the Bush family, and Oprah Winfrey.
Harvey Job Matusow was an American communist who became an informer for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and subsequently a paid witness for a variety of anti-subversion bodies, including the House Un-American Activities Committee, before eventually recanting the bulk of his testimony. These activities led to his own perjury conviction and a prison sentence. His McCarthy era activities overshadowed his later work as an artist, actor and producer.
Laura Hillenbrand is an American author of books and magazine articles. Her two bestselling nonfiction books, Seabiscuit: An American Legend (2001) and Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption (2010), have sold over 13 million copies, and each was adapted for film. Her writing style is distinct from New Journalism, dropping "verbal pyrotechnics" in favor of a stronger focus on the story itself.
Black bag operations or black bag jobs are covert or clandestine entries into structures to obtain information for human intelligence operations.
Elizabeth Terrill Bentley was an American NKVD spymaster, who was recruited from within the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). She served the Soviet Union as the primary handler of multiple highly placed moles within both the United States Federal Government and the Office of Strategic Services from 1938 to 1945. She defected by contacting the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and debriefing about her espionage activities.
Anatoly Veniaminovich Gorsky, was a Soviet spy who, under cover as First Secretary "Anatoly Borisovich Gromov" of the Soviet Embassy in Washington, was secretly rezident in the United States at the end of World War II.
Rebecca L. Skloot is an American science writer who specializes in science and medicine. Her first book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2010), was one of the best-selling new books of 2010, staying on The New York Times Bestseller list for over 6 years and eventually reaching #1. It was adapted into a movie by George C. Wolfe, which premiered on HBO on April 22, 2017, and starred Rose Byrne as Skloot, and Oprah Winfrey as Lacks's daughter Deborah.
Laila Lalami is a Moroccan-American novelist, essayist, and professor. After earning her licence ès lettres degree in Morocco, she received a fellowship to study in the United Kingdom (UK), where she earned an MA in linguistics.
The non-fiction novel is a literary genre that, broadly speaking, depicts non-fictional elements, such as real historical figures and actual events, woven together with fictitious conversations and uses the storytelling techniques of fiction. The non-fiction novel is an otherwise loosely defined and flexible genre. The genre is sometimes referred to using the slang term "faction", a portmanteau of the words fact and fiction.
Cheryl Strayed is an American writer and podcast host. She has written four books: the novel Torch (2006) and the nonfiction books Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail (2012), Tiny Beautiful Things (2012) and Brave Enough (2015). Wild, the story of Strayed's 1995 hike up the Pacific Crest Trail, is an international bestseller and was adapted into the 2014 Academy Award-nominated film Wild.
Kathleen Rooney is an American writer, publisher, editor, and educator.
Isabel Wilkerson is an American journalist and the author of The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration (2010) and Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (2020). She is the first woman of African-American heritage to win the Pulitzer Prize in journalism.
Thomas Hager is an American author of popular science and narrative nonfiction.
Julian Nelson Frank (1906–1974) was a journalist for the New York World-Telegram, an anti-communist special agent with U.S. Naval Intelligence, and an investigator for the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee.
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail is the 2012 memoir by the American writer, author, and podcaster Cheryl Strayed. The memoir describes Strayed's 1,100-mile hike on the Pacific Crest Trail in 1995 as a journey of self-discovery. The book reached No. 1 on the New York Times Best Seller list, and was the first selection for Oprah's Book Club 2.0.
Susan Elia MacNeal is an American author best known for her Maggie Hope mystery series of novels, which are set during World War II, mainly in London.
Lise Kristin Funderburg is an American writer and editor. She is the author of Pig Candy: Taking My Father South, Taking My Father Home, and Black, White, Other: Biracial Americans Talk about Race and Identity. One of the first books to explore the lives of adult children of black-white unions, Black, White, Other is a core text in the study of American multiracial identity.
Rebecca Morris is a New York Times bestselling true-crime author and a TV, radio and print journalist who lives in Seattle, Washington.
Monte Reel is an American author and journalist. His narrative nonfiction books include The Last of the Tribe (2010), Between Man and Beast (2013), and A Brotherhood of Spies (2018). From 2004 to 2008, he was the South America correspondent for The Washington Post and previously, he wrote for The Washington Post in Washington and Iraq.