Creative Writing Research Guide : Researching Fiction
Your Brain on Fiction
"New support for the value of fiction is arriving from an unexpected quarter: neuroscience..."
Continue reading at the New York Times about what brain scans have to do with fiction.
On Genres and "Literary Fiction" vs. "Genre Fiction"
There are many subsets under the general "Fiction" genre, including: fantasy, romance, historical fiction, horror, humor, mystery, science fiction, children's literature, short stories, and more.
In your research, you may encounter references to "literary fiction" versus "genre fiction". This dichotomy is not universally agreed upon, and is in fact somewhat controversial. In general, though, "genre fiction" refers to writing that falls under one of the above listed genre subsets, and "literary fiction" refers to, well, everything else. For further reading on the issue, you might turn to these two essays written on the subject, the second in response to the first:
"Easy Writers: Guilty pleasures without guilt." Arthur Krystal for The New Yorker, May 28, 2012.
Literary Revolution in the Supermarket Aisle: Genre Fiction is Disruptive Technology." Lev Grossman for Time Magazine, May 23, 2012.
Fiction Reference and Resources
- Magill's bibliography of literary criticismSelected sources for the study of more than 2,500 outstanding works of western literature.
- Paris Review interview archiveThe Review’s Writers at Work interview series offers authors a rare opportunity to discuss their life and art at length; they have responded with some of the most revealing self-portraits in literature. Among the interviewees are William Faulkner, Vladimir Nabokov, Joan Didion, Seamus Heaney, Ian McEwan, and Lorrie Moore. In the words of one critic, it is “one of the single most persistent acts of cultural conservation in the history of the world.”
- UbuWeb Sound RecordingsA vast resource of audio, with a focus on the avant-garde. Includes recordings of J.G. Ballard, Gertrude Stein, William S. Burroughs, and many other authors, poets, theorists, and artists.
Created by...
This Research Guide was created by Oliver Bendorf and Susan Barribeau.