What is creative nonfiction? Interview with Liv Kane
Photo and bio courtesy of Liv Kane. https://alivkane.com/about
Liv Kane is a writer and filmmaker interested in exploring the intersections between community storytelling, ecology, and food systems. She served as the inaugural Writer-in-Residence at the San Antonio Public Library and received the New York Life Award for her work in 2019. A graduate of Kenyon College and a recipient of the George B. Ogden Award, she published her first essay collection, Gulfwater, with Sunset Press in Spring 2021. She is currently pursuing her MFA in Nonfiction at the University of Iowa, where she is an Iowa Arts Fellow.
To help undergraduate students understand the complexities of what creative nonfiction is, we reached out to a Nonfiction MFA student here at the University of Iowa, Liv Kane. In the interview below, Liv generously shared with us their knowledge and insights into the genre and how they feel their own work fits within the definition of creative nonfiction.
How would you define creative nonfiction and how has this definition shaped your own experience as a writer?
I would say creative nonfiction is one of those things that’s intentionally difficult to pin down: it encompasses so much, from journalism to memoir to documentary poetry, and in a beautiful way I think it really undoes the idea of genre altogether. I started mainly writing poetry, and a lot of people would read my work and tell me, you know, this could be an essay, so I started to think about how I could carry things like lyricism over from poetry, into my creative nonfiction writing. I think the long and short of it is that nobody really knows what this genre can look like and there’s so much incredible space for invention in that lack of definition.
How do you approach balancing speculation and reality within your own work?
I think this question is one that I’m constantly turning over in my head, depending on what I want a piece to accomplish. The moment you alchemize something on the page, it’s no longer a complete reality, it’s a version of reality you could fit into words, and because of that I think speculation is sometimes essential in works of nonfiction. I want to be transparent with my readers, though, so if I feel like a piece might need some inventing or speculation in order to accomplish something, I let the reader know that that’s what I’m doing. I think in nonfiction, you need to navigate the responsibility you have as a writer to tell the truth, and for me that means telling my readers when I have to invent something because the facts aren’t there or I need to protect a person etc. Every writer will have their own way of going about this, and it’s about building that code for yourself as you grow in your own writing.
Do you have any advice for someone who is interested in exploring creative nonfiction or just started writing creative nonfiction?
I would say absolutely go for it! Nonfiction can be such a healing space for writers because you have more words to say what you’re feeling, and you don’t always need to build characters or intricate metaphors to write through an experience you’ve had (although you totally can, and those are really exciting pieces of nonfiction to read). I would also argue, as someone who is not completely sold on the idea of discreet genres, that you have probably already been writing beautiful nonfiction beneath your stanzas in poetry and in your fictional scenes. Nonfiction can offer a chance for you to navigate an idea directly, a way for you to look at something head-on. There’s also so much incredible subject matter waiting to be written about in the world we’re living in, and nonfiction demonstrates that real life is both exciting and complex enough to be written about, with or without the formal tools of fiction and poetry.
