8: The Creative Nonfiction Scene from Page to Stage

Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes is often credited with igniting the rocket of memoir popularity in the 1990s. The memoir won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and a top spot on the New York Times best-seller list. Since then, memoir in general has continued to rise as a popular genre. Stories about difficult or unconventional childhood experiences tend to gain the most attention, but some writers, such as David Sedaris, make a living selling revised journal entries dripping with flippant observations about everyday wanderings and interactions mixed with the inevitable heartbreaks in life. He shares everything from moments spent feeding wildlife in his backyard to gathering with his family after the suicide of his sister.

Celebrity memoirs have seized a top spot on nonfiction best-seller lists, and their popularity has exploded in recent years. The Obamas reportedly received a 60 million dollar advance from their publisher for two memoirs describing their years in the White House. Barack Obama’s 2020 book entitled A Promised Land set a record for the highest nonfiction book sales on its first day of publication, selling 887,000 copies (Porterfield). That record didn’t hold on long, though, as Prince Harry’s Spare set a new record in 2023, selling over a million copies worldwide on its first day of release. Harry reportedly made “only” a 20 million dollar advance from Penguin/Random House for his novel, about which he has been transparent that he used a ghostwriter named J.R. Moehringer. Both books continue to sell.

Behind-the-scenes stories of popular celebrity lives are hot in the 2020s. Britney Spears, Elliot Page, Trevor Noah, and Matthew Perry have penned books—whether by themselves or with the help of ghost writers, the public will not know.

Other memoir nonfiction books with themes such as gender differences, environmental awareness, and cultural navigation that have sold well in the past five years include Braiding Sweetgrass, Crying in HMart, and Educated.

As of May 2025, Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass was still number six on the New York Times paperback nonfiction bestseller list, having ranked near the top for 263 weeks (“Bestsellers—Paperback Nonfiction”). An exploration that combines storytelling from her indigenous culture (Dr. Kimmerer is a member of the Potawatomi Nation) with her own experiences as a botanist and a mother, Braiding Sweetgrass is also a perfect long-form example of the braided essay explained in a later chapter on nonfiction forms. The braided form is exposed to the reader even in the subtitle of the book, Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants.

Here’s an excerpt:

We have enjoyed the feast generously laid out for us by Mother Earth, but now the plates are empty and the dining room is a mess. It’s time we started doing the dishes in Mother Earth’s kitchen. Doing dishes has gotten a bad rap, but everyone who migrates to the kitchen after a meal knows that that’s where the laughter happens, the good conversations, the friendships. Doing dishes, like doing restoration, forms relationships. How we approach restoration of land depends, of course, on what we believe that “land” means. If land is just real estate, then restoration looks very different than if land is the source of a subsistence economy and a spiritual home. Restoring land for production of natural resources is not the same as renewal of land as cultural identity. We have to think about what land means (328).

Braiding Sweetgrass, the second of four books written by Kimmerer, is a superb example of contemporary creative nonfiction, full of powerful narrative, strong sensory description, memorable metaphor (as in the dishwashing comparison above), and gentle rhetorical face-punches.

TRANSITION HERE

Veracity has been a fraught topic in recent decades as a few mega-hit nonfiction books have been slammed for inaccurate information. Frank McCourt was verbally attacked on a European talk show by a man claiming to have grown up in Limerick, the town McCourt portrayed in Angela’s Ashes, his 1997 Pulitzer-Prize winning memoir. The perspiring audience member called McCourt a liar, claiming gross exaggeration throughout the book (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Mb8Mb0p808). James Frey was famously skewered in 2006 by Oprah Winfrey for fabricating several events and characters in his best-seller, A Million Little Pieces. In 2011, the mega-hit book entitled Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson was scrutinized by fellow writers, not only for the truth of the events described, but for the way Mortenson was reportedly mishandling funds that had been donated to help the people in Afghanistan he claimed to serve.

Read more about the Mortenson debacle: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2011/04/18/135508982/three-cups-of-tea-author-in-hot-water-over-alleged-fabrications

McCourt’s Questions: https://www.irishpost.com/entertainment/angelas-ashes-7-things-may-not-know-pulitzer-prize-winning-memoir-author-169766

James Frey’s story: https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/oprah-winfrey-takes-james-frey-to-task-for-lying

Research nonfiction: Erik Larsen. Jon Krakauer. Began in this era with Capote spending two years in the town the crime occurred. “Literary Nonfiction.”