About the cooper

This issue of Fourth Genre features an extended conversation among four authors about the role of research in literary nonfiction, a historical cover photograph (a first for us) by Luke Swank accompanied by a photo essay by Howard Bossen tracking the photograph's serendipitous origins, and, in addition to a line up of personal essays and our usual spread of book reviews, the winning entries in Fourth Genre's Third Annual Editors' Prize contest judged this year by Maureen Stanton.

The roundtable on "Research in Nonfiction" and Howard Bossen's fascinating story about discovering the long--lost photographs of Luke Swank take us to the ground floor, if not the very foundations, of nonfiction into those domains where writers spend vast amounts of time and expend enormous energy, often largely invisible to readers: research, source work, rigorous documentation. As moderator Robert Root notes in his introduction to the roundtable, new forms of literary or creative nonfiction may have blurred or relocated the boundaries of the genre, but that does not weaken or compromise a writer's responsibility--indeed, the need—to incorporate sound source work and documentation into their writing practices. That responsibility, as much of the work in this issue reflects, is hardly ever an onerous chore or a clinical matter of fact checking alone. On the contrary, rigorous research grounded in a writer's personal commitment to a subject brings its own rewards and satisfactions that complement—indeed, "intimately link" according to roundtable participant Kristen Iversen—the daily challenges of organizing, composing, revising, and struggling with words. The roundtable and Bossen's photo essay gave us a new sight line for rereading the contents of the Essays and Memoirs section—our usual practice in drafting these notes before going to press. There we found other writers braiding together memoir and exposition, exploring the way that a personal journey through a subject can profoundly impact, as John Calderazzo points out in the roundtable, a writer's inner life—and, we might add, a reader's insight into a subject.

Nedra Rogers, our Editors' Prize winner, for example, painstakingly researches a single lesson in an elementary school science class that forever alters her understanding of history, the quotidian world, and her place in the biological scheme of things. Her "sources" include Mark Twain, Rock Hudson, the etymology of Latin words, even the shade of her science teacher's glazed nail polish. Similarly, runner--up Casey Fleming meticulously investigates a deep wound she's carried since her high school Drill Team initiation. While the result of her investigation is layered and complex, Fleming uses the rigors of sorting through her library of memories— often turning a memory to different angles of view—to find some acceptance, perspective, clarity, even forgiveness.

Throughout our Essays and Memoirs section other writers work at the crossroads of memoir and exposition. Their subjects of inquiry range from a 17th century painting by a Dutch master, a woodpecker, garlic, and the assassination of John Lennon, to a clothes closet, an autopsy, the Glen Canyon Dam, and the awful hard luck of a friend. Like the writers joined together in our roundtable and Howard Bossen's adventure into the work and legacy of Luke Swank, each of these writers is a player and a presence in the subjects they explore.

We find this balance of personal reflection and solid source work reassuring. At a time when some critics of the contemporary essay and memoir question the credibility of first person narration, these essays remind us that a deeply personal story, objectivity, and scrupulous documentation need not be mutually exclusive. In fact, merging memoir and exposition often brings a higher burden of integrity to bear on an essay, compelling a writer to greater diligence and thoroughness in research.

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On a sad note: we learned recently that Deborah Tall passed away in early November, 2006. Poet, essayist, editor of the Seneca Review for twentyfour years, Tall is the author of Summons, From Where We Stand: Recovering a Sense of Place, and most recently, A Family of Strangers from which we featured an excerpt in the Fall 2006 number of Fourth Genre...