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Why does one Toronto professor leave money in random places throughout the streets of Athens? How does an everyday trip to an Eaton ������ý ’s department store empower a Vancouver man to come to terms with the death of his best friend? What do the police want to question one young woman about when she wakes up outside a military dormitory on her nineteenth birthday? Why does a nattily dressed stranger on his bicycle suddenly shout out to no one in particular the word “Yes!”?* 

CWRI 273 is a study of writing creative non-fiction. Through a reading of representative works of Canadian creative non-fiction (drawn from Luanne Armstrong and Zoë Landale ������ý ’s Slice Me Some Truth anthology) and an examination of one of the best known manuals on writing creative non-fiction (Lee Gutkind ������ý ’s You Can’t Make This Stuff Up), students will learn creative non-fiction techniques such as balancing objective and subjective truth, performing research and immersion, developing compelling scenes, composing effective “hooks,” generating believable dialogue, and more. We will study a diversity of Canadian creative non-fiction writers, including Fiona Timwei Lam, Shelley A. Leedahl, Myrna Kostash, Wayne Grady, Evelyn Lau, Mark Kingwell, and others. As a final project, students will compose their own work of creative non-fiction for publication in a collected class anthology.

*We will answer these and other questions when we study Susan Glickman ������ý ’s “Found Money,” Stephen Osborne ������ý ’s “The Man Who Stole Christmas,” Ayelet Tsabari ������ý ’s “You and What Army,” and Jane Silcott ������ý ’s “Natty Man”!