The Debate Over In Cold Blood

For the U.S. journal, Critical Insights, I wrote an essay that looks at why Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, his 1966 “nonfiction novel” about a crime, remains a revered example of creative nonfiction, even though Capote was rather too creative with his nonfiction in many parts of the book. The essay is here: http://davidhayes.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Truman-Capote-and-the-Legacy-of-In-Cold-Blood.pdf.

How Not to do Research…

MFA in Creative Nonfiction Meet-&-Greet

University of King’s College MFA in CREATIVE NONFICTION Meet & Greet  Western Canada: Tuesday, November 3, 6:30 pm Pacific  Central Canada: Wednesday, November 4, 7:30 pm Eastern Atlantic Canada: Thursday, November 5, 7:30 Atlantic If you have an idea for a nonfiction book, we can help you get it onto the page—and you can do […]

Working with Robert A. Caro

What I learned from historian and journalist Robert A. Caro’s 2019 book, Working. On research: “Of course there was more. If you ask the right questions, there always is. That’s the problem.” “It’s the research that takes the time — the research and whatever it is in myself that makes the research take so long, […]

Epistolary Nonfiction

I was thinking the other day about epistolary novels, based on documents, traditionally letters but sometimes diary entries or other correspondence (could be emails, tweets, texts, blog posts, etc). Over the years, I’ve read some I really liked — Samantha Harvey’s Dear Thief (a kind of “cover novel” of Leonard Cohen’s Famous Blue Raincoat); A. […]

The Book That Changed My Life

As a teenager and into my early 20s, I loved writing and music. Influenced by the rock revolution led by The Beatles and Stones, I played bass in a band. Influenced by Rolling Stone magazine, Creem, and The Village Voice‘s pop music coverage, I planned to attend journalism school. Instead, in 1975, I became an […]

Whose View to Choose?

I have long believed that all memoirs are written in first person. Why? Well, because the majority of them are, but also because readers expect the writer of a memoir to be a reliable narrator, someone they trust is telling the truth about themselves to the best of their memory. Now, rather late in life, […]

The Multi-Color Pen

Bic introduced the first multi-color pen in April 1970 in France. Soon other manufacturers were making them. While kids, like me, loved the novelty of them, the original purpose was practical: people who needed multiple colors of ink in their work would no longer have to carry around several different pens. Unlike latter-day fountain pens, […]

Yaggy’s 19th Century Publishing Empire

Levi Walter Yaggy was an inventor, writer, and publisher in Chicago. His 1886 Yaggy Anatomical Study of Human Anatomy (used in medical schools and by physicians) was considered a landmark of its era, especially for its use of pop-ups. The folio contained large charts, or “manikens,” of the human anatomy, including the skeleton, muscles, nervous […]

Untangling a Family Mystery

This is how it began, and how it would end, on the long pale strand of a Lincolnshire beach in the last hour of sun, the daylight moon small as a kite in the sky. Far below, a child of three was playing by herself with a new tin spade. It was still strangely warm […]