"This books is a how-to guide that advises college applicants on how to craft an effective personal essay and an overall compelling, competent persona in their college applications by writing well. The goal is to help applicants gain admission to colleges of their choice by advising them on writing skills, with chapters on skills such as voice, diction, paragraph organization, narrative arc, etc. The book is aimed at high school junior and seniors,...

A guide to writing the personal essay, including the basics of essay writing, how to move past private "journaling," and instructions for revision and strategies for getting published.

How negotiable is a fact in nonfiction? In 2003, an essay by John D'Agata was rejected by the magazine that commissioned it due to factual inaccuracies. That essay--which eventually became the foundation of D'Agata's critically acclaimed About a Mountain--was accepted by another magazine, but not before they handed it to their own fact-checker, Jim Fingal. What resulted from that assignment was seven years of arguments, negotiations, and revisions...