Even before Lee Gutkind was spotlighted in Vanity Fair Magazine in 1997 as “the Godfather behind creative nonfiction” he was its most active advocate and practitioner. In 1991, he founded Creative Nonfiction, the first and the largest literary journal to publish narrative/creative nonfiction exclusively. He was instrumental in starting the first MFA program in creative nonfiction at the University of Pittsburgh and the first low residency program at Goucher College.
All the while, he was practicing what he was preaching, immersing himself in diverse worlds for months and years and producing dramatic and intimate creative nonfiction books about subjects as rich and varied as the motorcycle subculture, child and adolescent mental illness, baseball umpires, veterinary medicine and organ transplantation.
Send questions, comments and corrections to info@creativewritingmfa.info.
Disclaimer: No endorsement of these ratings should be implied by the writers and writing programs listed on this site, or by the editors and publishers of Best American Short Stories, Best American Essays, Best American Poetry, The O. Henry Prize Stories and The Pushcart Prize Anthology.