Inside Story

From characterization to structure, interviewing to ethics, Julia Goldberg's Inside Story: Everyone's Guide to Reporting and Writing Creative Nonfiction covers the full range of techniques, genres, and opportunities available to writers of fact. As an added bonus, she does it with flair, feistiness, and intelligence. A great new guide to the nonfiction craft. --Dinty W. Moore, author of The Mindful Writer Inside Story has at least two features no other craft book does. I love its section on reporting. And I am passionately enthusiastic about its generative discussion of the various shapes an essay or article might take. It rejects merely linear form as well as journalistic or academic prescriptions. This is the perfect book for beginning and advanced writers of creative nonfiction, and I will use it in my classroom. --Debra Monroe, author of My Unsentimental Education This is the creative nonfiction guide we've been waiting for--as informed and thoughtful as a D'Agata or Lopate anthology, but with the practical and generous perspective of a writer who's done it all, from teaching to journalism to online curation. Julia Goldberg's new book, Inside Story, offers a uniquely ideal combination of personal perspective, practical examples, inspiring anecdotes from literary history, and a whole host of helpful challenges and prompts. I'd trust any writer and editor whose trunk was once filled to the brim with yellow notepads. --Nathan Deuel, author of Friday Was the Bomb: Five Years in the Middle East Creative non-fiction has a siren's call for writers--it's a way to unflinchingly examine ourselves and our worlds. But it is a difficult pursuit. Julia Goldberg has made that pursuit easier, more productive, and more likely with her new book, Inside Story. Witty, incisive, and full of brilliance, she takes a clear and detailed look at the makings of both journalism and memoir. Goldberg's distinctive intelligent voice makes reading Inside Story like having a personal writing teacher at your side. --Miriam Sagan, author of Map of the Lost and Tanka from the Edge Don't read Inside Story without a highlighter! Every reporter--from a greenhorn to a veteran--will find helpful tools, tricks and lessons about the craft of reporting and writing. --Mark Zusman, editor and publisher of Willamette Week, a Pulitzer prize-winning weekly I don't know how I could like Julia Goldberg's Inside Story any more than I do. As a teacher, the book will serve as a primer to all my students who want to write for any form of journalism and media. As a writer, I will keep Inside Story nearby to remind myself of the vital issues of craft and technique as I compose and revise. To put it plainly: If you want to write creative nonfiction, this book is essential. --Robert Wilder, author of Daddy Needs a Drink and Nickel If you want real-world tools for becoming a standout nonfiction writer, look no further than this book. Instead of giving you platitudes from an ivory tower, Julia Goldberg dishes out the hard-earned wisdom she picked up from working 15 years in the trenches of alternative journalism. If you're serious about a career as a writer, my advice is to take this book home, pour yourself a stiff drink, and prepare to get schooled by one of the most bad-ass editors to have worked in the alt-weekly industry. --Jason Zaragoza, Association of Alternative Newsmedia