22nd Annual Student Research Conference
January 1st 2006: An experiment on transcending the barrier of
perspective within non-fiction
Shannon C. Harbaugh
Dr. Charles Breed, Faculty Mentor
January 1st 2006 is an experiment of transcending a main barrier of nonfiction composition, memory, and discovering what is lost by having a single narrator. I decided to write the same story three times each from a different narrators point of view: my own, my fathers and my mothers. I will explore January 1st 2006 stylistically and examine the effects of separate narrators memories combined along with ethical obligations of a nonfiction author to adhere to truth and fact. Additionally, I will discuss the ways in which a story perceived differently depending on who is the narrator is addressed by Stephen Minot in Literary Nonfiction: The Fourth Genre as well as in Sondra Perls and Mimi Schwartzs Writing True: The Art and Craft of Creative Nonfiction.
Keywords: Non-fiction, Narrators, ethics
Topic(s):English
Presentation Type: Oral Paper
Session: 5-1
Location: OP 2115
Time: 8:15