McCrary brings his sharp sense of the essay form to the conversation, and the two explore the boundaries and conventions of the generic labels nonfiction writers apply to their work. What does it mean to write journalistic essays? Essayistic journalism? Research-heavy memoir? What do we call nonfiction that forsakes fact? McCrary and D'Agata press these issues, and try to give name to a form that is by definition always shifting, always trying to figure itself out.
D'Agata is the author of About a Mountain and Halls of Fame, and the editor of the nonfiction anthologies The Next American Essay and The Lost Origins of the Essay. He will be giving a reading at Columbia College next week along with Jim Fingal, the fact checker whose correspondence with D'Agata became the meat of the pair's new book: The Lifespan of a Fact, published by W.W. Norton & Company.
The reading, which is open to the public, will take place February 23 at 7 p.m. in Hokin Hall at 623 S. Wabash in Chicago.
