“Chronicles of Brunonia” presents historical narratives of life at Brown University, spawned by the archival documents in John Hay Library and the Rhode Island Historical Society, and written by undergraduates. Most of the narratives here were written in creative nonfiction workshops taught by English Nonfiction Distinguished Senior Lecturer Elizabeth Taylor. The Nonfiction Writing Program teaches nonfiction in all its many sub-genres — the academic essay, journalism, and creative nonfiction (memoir, literary journalism, lyric essay, historical narrative, travel essay, science writing, and cultural critique). Students in Taylor’s creative nonfiction workshops work with reference librarians in the Hay to find primary and secondary sources to help them visualize and corroborate the facts of a person, event, or phenomenon in Brown’s history. In the workshop they draft and revise their story through several iterations with the help of suggestions from peers and the instructor. The end result is a shaped, fact-checked narrative that blends the scholarly methods of research and reflection with the storytelling techniques of narration, plot, scene, and characterization. All sources are carefully cited and linked from this site to the digitized original source (if available).
