Making the Personal Universal: Incorporating Research into your Creative Practice

By Amy Shea

I didn’t set out to write a researched narrative nonfiction book. I’d spent over a decade writing mostly personal essays and creative nonfiction. But when I felt the pull to write on the topic of disparities in death and dying, which eventually developed into my debut book, Too Poor to Die: The Hidden Realities of Dying in the Margins, I found myself diving headlong into research.

It was unfamiliar territory. As I began my doctorate, where I researched and wrote the first dr...