Non-Fictional Prose 2010 - Web Paper 1

These are the first webpapers to emerge from Facing the Facts, a course about category-making offered at Bryn Mawr College in Fall 2010. Not quite one month into the semester, students are exploring here the initial questions that have arisen for them about the literary "kind" that we know as non-fictional prose. What difference might the distinctions between "fact" and "fiction" make, for instance, in the world of intellectual property, or in the worlds of law and medicine into which they themselves hope to move? How might these categories impinge on the form of the academic essays they are writing right now?

Take a look around, and feel warmly welcome to respond in the comment area available at the end of each paper. What strikes, intrigues, puzzles you...what, among your reactions, might be of interest or use to the writer, others in the class, or those who--exploring the internet--might be in search of thoughtful conversation about how we are making sense, in the form of non-fictional prose, of the world in which we find ourselves?