Admirers of nailed-down definitions and tidy categories may not like to hear it, but all writers and readers are full-time imaginers, all prose is imaginative, and fiction and nonfiction are just two anarchic shades of ink swirling around the same mysterious well.

– David James Duncan

.

.

.

The essay is distinguished from the short story, not by the presence or absence of literary devices, not by tone or theme or subject, but by the writer’s stance toward the material.

– Scott Russell Sanders

.

.

.

As the writer holds up his question to the narrative while moving along in time, the friction between the question and the scene (or even a single detail) throws up a meditative spark.

– Eileen Pollack

.

.

.

The language of creative nonfiction is as literary, as imaginative, as that of other literary genres and is similarly used for lyrical, narrative, and dramatic effects.

– Michael Steinberg and Robert L. Root, Jr.

.

.

.