All writers conduct research. For some this means poring over records and combing, archives but for many creative writers research happens in the everyday world when they scribble an observation on the subway, when they travel to get the feel for a city, or when they strike up a conversation with an interesting stranger.The Art of Creative Research helps writers take this natural inclination to explore and observe and turn it into a workable and enjoyable research plan. It shows that research shouldn't be seen as a dry, plodding aspect of writing. Instead, it's an art that all writers can master, one that unearths surprises and fuels imagination. This lends authenticity to fiction and poetry as well as nonfiction. Philip Gerard distills the process into fundamental questions: How do you conduct research? And what can you do with the information you gather? He covers both in-person research and work in archives and illustrates how the different types of research can be incorporated into stories, poems, and essays using examples from a wide range of writers in addition to those from his own projects. Throughout, Gerard brings knowledge from his seasoned background into play, drawing on his experiences as a reporter and a writer of both fiction and nonfiction. His enthusiasm for adventure is infectious and will inspire writers to step away from the keyboard and into the world. "Research can take you to that golden intersection where the personal meets the public, the private crosses the universal, where the best literature lives," Gerard writes. With his masterly guidance, anyone can become an expert in artful investigation.

Notable events of the 1950s in North Carolina, the second book in this North Carolina history series.This book is the second in a series of small, richly illustrated books about North Carolina history through the decades. Originally published as hugely popular serialized articles for Our State magazine, this book chronicles events in North Carolina in the 1950s—a decade which began with a postwar boom in transportation, travel, and progress while some North Carolinians also began to speak out for their rightful piece of prosperity and freedom. The volume is not a textbook overview of the state’s history. Rather, each chapter focuses on a lively and illuminating set of events in the era such as the fight for recognition by the Lumbee Tribe, the opening of an art museum with a collection owned by the people of North Carolina, the formation of Research Triangle Park, and the birth of the civil rights era at a small lunch counter. The book contains color vintage photographs and illustrations. The author—writer, professor, and musician, Philip Gerard—has published widely, including an iconic novel about the Wilmington coup of 1898, Cape Fear Rising, and is beloved in North Carolina, especially among Our State readers.

This book is the first in a series of small, richly illustrated books about North Carolina history through the decades. Originally published as hugely popular serialized articles for Our State magazine, this book chronicles events in North Carolina in the 1940s-a decade which began with the state gearing up for war just as the last formerly enslaved person passed away. The volume is not a textbook overview of the state's history. Rather, each chapter focuses on a lively and illuminating set of events in the era, such as the music explosion around John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk in the eastern part of the state and Earl Scruggs and traditional string band music in the west, the polio pandemic, shipbuilding in wartime, a harsh era of hurricanes and floods, as well as tobacco as the king of the farming and industrial sectors. The book contains color vintage photographs and illustrations. The author, writer, professor, and musician, Philip Gerard, has published widely, including an iconic novel about the Wilmington coup of 1898, Cape Fear Rising, and is beloved in North Carolina, especially among Our State readers.

Set off the treacherous Outer Banks of North Carolina during the final days of the First World War, Hatteras Light is the compelling story of the dedicated keepers of the Hatteras lighthouse and their tightly knit community. For generations these men have drawn their livelihood from the sea, served in the rescue of shipwreck victims, and guarded seagoers from the hazardous shoals. Their wives and daughters endure a difficult, solitary life, their fortitude constantly tested. Loyal to one another and to a traditional way of life, the islanders are suspicious of outsiders and censorious of those who leave. The insular world of these Hatterasmen disrupts when a German U-boat reveals itself offshore, indiscriminately sinking civilian and military vessels, challenging the courage of the lifesavers, and signaling the dawning of a darker, less honorable age. Over a few crucial days, we become intimate with these men and women, and with the German officers aboard U-55 who have made the islanders' lives hell. What emerges is an adventure story full of wisdom and compassion, a novel unfailingly accurate in portraying the struggle of man and sea, man against man, and of men and women. Based on historical fact, Philip Gerard's novel is a powerful book whose storytelling represents the most human tendencies in life and art. Philip Gerard is the author of five novels and eight books of nonfiction, including Down the Wild Cape Fear: A River Journey Through the Heart of North Carolina and The Patron Saint of Dreams, winner of the 2012 North American Gold Medal in Essay/Creative Nonfiction from The Independent Publisher.

Meet the characters of essayist Philip Gerard’s world: a misguided sailor and his crew of rowdy teenage boys, an ancient nun, a nurse who believes the government has been secretly spreading the bubonic plague, a park ranger, jaded baseball players, a voice on a VHF radio far out to sea, a family of itinerant Mexicans camping dangerously in a dry riverbed, a famous alcoholic writer, and a few inexplicable ghosts. Gerard’s true stories are shot through with the uncanny and the mysterious—they are not quiet interior contemplations but instead are full of public events, remarkable encounters, life-and-death moments that both reveal and deepen the mysteries of our lives. The Patron Saint of Dreams is a collection of fifteen narrative essays that address events in the world through the lens of personal experience, moments when seemingly small decisions have large consequences: enduring the terror of a direct hit by a hurricane, hiking through bear country and suffering a heart attack, hearing a disturbing secret from a old soldier who has kept it for sixty years, discovering an imposter who maintains his dual life long after death. Told by one of the South’s most acclaimed and masterful nonfiction writers, these are the stories we live, and the lovely and terrible people who live them with us.

An arresting memoir of the final years and tragic suicide of one of twentieth-century Europe's greatest poets, published on the centenary of his birth. "Daive's memoir sensitively conjures a portrait of a man tormented by both his mind and his medical treatment but who nonetheless remained a generous friend and a poet for whom writing was a matter of life and death."-The New Yorker "Jean Daive's memoir of his brief but intense spell as confidant and poetic confrere of Paul Celan offers us unique access to the mind and personality of one of the great poets of the dark twentieth century."-J.M. Coetzee Paul Celan (1920-1970) is considered one of Europe's greatest post-World-War II poets, known for his astonishing experiments in poetic form, expression, and address. Under the Dome is French poet Jean Daive's haunting memoir of his friendship with Celan, a precise yet elliptical account of their daily meetings, discussions, and walks through Paris, a routine that ended suddenly when Celan committed suicide by drowning himself in the Seine. Daive's grief at the loss of his friend finds expression in Under the Dome, where we are given an intimate insight into Celan's last years, at the height of his poetic powers, and as he approached the moment when he would succumb to the debilitating emotional pain of a Holocaust survivor. In Under the Dome, Jean Daive illuminates Celan's process of thinking about poetry, grappling with questions of where it comes from and what it does: invaluable insights about poetry's relation to history and ethics, and how poems offer pathways into a deeper grasp of our past and present. This new edition of Rosmarie Waldrop's masterful translation includes an introduction by scholars Robert Kaufman and Philip Gerard, which provides critical, historical, and cultural context for Daive's enigmatic, timeless text. "Under the Dome breathes with Celan while walking with Celan, walking in the dark and the light with Celan, invoking the stillness, the silence, of the breathturn while speaking for the deeply human necessity of poetry."-Michael Palmer, author of The Laughter of the Sphinx "The fragments textured together in this more-than-magnificent rendering of Jean Daive's prose poem by this master of the word, Rosmarie Waldrop, grab on and leave us haunted and speechless."-Mary Ann Caws, author of Creative Gatherings: Meeting Places of Modernism and editor of the Yale Anthology of Twentieth Century French Poetry "Rosmarie Waldrop's brilliant translation resonates with her profound knowledge of both Celan's and Daive's poetry and the passion for language that she shares with them. The text brings these three major poets together in a highly unusual and wholly successful collaboration."-Cole Swensen, author of On Walking On "Rosmarie Waldrop takes up Celan's question to Jean Daive as her own. I cannot unread her inimitable ease in these pages. This is a book that contends with time."-Fady Joudah, author of Footnotes in the Order of Disappearance "Daive's writing is a highly punctuated recollection, a memoir, perhaps a testimony, but also surely a way of attending to the time of the writing, the conditions and coordinates of Celan's various enunciations, his linguistic humility. ... Celan's death, what Daive calls 'really unforeseeable,' remains as an 'undercurrent' in the conversations recollected here, gathered up again, with an insistence and clarity of true mourning and acknowledgement."-Judith Butler, author of The Force of Nonviolence

In Down the Wild Cape Fear, novelist and nonfiction writer Philip Gerard invites readers onto the fabled waters of the Cape Fear River and guides them on the 200-mile voyage from the confluence of the Deep and Haw Rivers at Mermaid Point all the way to the Cape of Fear on Bald Head Island. Accompanying the author by canoe and powerboat are a cadre of people passionate about the river, among them a river guide, a photographer, a biologist, a river keeper, and a boat captain. Historical voices also lend their wisdom to our understanding of this river, which has been a main artery of commerce, culture, settlement, and war for the entire region since it was first discovered by Verrazzano in 1524. Gerard explores the myriad environmental and political issues being played out along the waters of the Cape Fear. These include commerce and environmental stewardship, wilderness and development, suburban sprawl and the decline and renaissance of inner cities, and private rights versus the public good.

To understand the long march of events in North Carolina from secession to surrender is to understand the entire Civil War--a personal war waged by Confederates and Unionists, free blacks and the enslaved, farm women and plantation belles, Cherokees and mountaineers, conscripts and volunteers, gentleman officers and poor privates. In the state's complex loyalties, its sprawling and diverse geography, and its dual role as a home front and a battlefield, North Carolina embodies the essence of the whole epic struggle in all its terrible glory. Philip Gerard presents this dramatic convergence of events through the stories of the individuals who endured them--reporting the war as if it were happening in the present rather than with settled hindsight--to capture the dreadful suspense of lives caught up in a conflict whose ending had not yet been written. As Gerard reveals, whatever the grand political causes for war, whatever great battles decided its outcome, and however abstract it might seem to readers a century and a half later, the war was always personal.

Experience the power and the promise of working in today' most exciting literary form: Creative Nonfiction

"Writing Creative Nonfiction" presents more than thirty essays examining every key element of the craft, from researching ideas and structuring the story, to reportage and personal reflection. You'll learn from some of today's top creative nonfiction writers, including:

Terry Tempest Williams - Analyze your motivation for writing, its value, and its strength.

Alan Cheuse - Discover how interesting, compelling essays can be drawn from every corner of your life and the world in which you live.

Phillip Lopate - Build your narrator&#150yourself&#150into a fully fleshed-out character, giving your readers a clearer, more compelling idea of who is speaking and why they should listen.

Robin Hemley - Develop a narrative strategy for structuring your story and making it cohesive.

Carolyn Forche - Master the journalistic ethics of creative nonfiction.

Dinty W. Moore - Use satire, exaggeration, juxtaposition, and other forms of humor in creative nonfiction.

Philip Gerard - Understand the narrative stance&#150why and how an author should, or should not, enter into the story.

Through insightful prompts and exercises, these contributors help make the challenge of writing creative nonfiction&#150whether biography, true-life adventure, memoir, or narrative history&#150a welcome, rewarding endeavor.

You'll also find an exciting, creative nonfiction "reader" comprising the final third of the book, featuring pieces from Barry Lopez, Annie Dillard, Beverly Lowry, Phillip Lopate, and more&#150selections so extraordinary, they will teach, delight, inspire, and entertain you for years to come