An “accidental memoirist”

Over at Bibliobuffet, Daniel M. Jaffee has an interview with Samantha Dunn. Dunn began her career as a novelist (Failing Paris) and magazine writer, but after she was badly injured falling from a horse she found herself writing her first memoir, Not By Accident: Reconstructing a Careless Life. She’s since written another, Faith in Carlos Gomez: A Memoir of Salsa, Sex, and Salvation.

Of memoirs, she says,

I’ve come to realize that . . . one of the things that makes memoir writing unique . . . is the level of direct self-inquiry that is not demanded in other forms. That’s why I don’t call it ‘creative nonfiction’; to me that label goes to great reportage, in the school of Wolf or Capote.

She found her home, as a writer, in this genre.