{"id":2512,"date":"2024-01-31T13:00:31","date_gmt":"2024-01-31T13:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2024\/01\/31\/kim-cross-wins-truman-capote-nonfiction-award\/"},"modified":"2024-10-18T16:32:43","modified_gmt":"2024-10-18T16:32:43","slug":"kim-cross-wins-truman-capote-nonfiction-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2024\/01\/31\/kim-cross-wins-truman-capote-nonfiction-award\/","title":{"rendered":"Kim Cross wins Truman Capote nonfiction award"},"content":{"rendered":" \n
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We received a lot of thumbs-up in response to the two-part post (November 2023) featuring nonfiction author Kim Cross. Our pieces featured an interview with Cross about how she landed a contract<\/a> for her book, \u201cIn Light of All Darkness,\u201d<\/a> after eight years and multiple upgrades to her proposal. That was followed by a detailed annotation of the book proposal<\/a> itself, which offered a rare glimpse into the work it takes to take a book from dream to reality.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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That work is now being honored as this year\u2019s winner of the Truman Capote Prize for Distinguished Work in Literary Non-Fiction or the Short Story<\/a>. Cross\u2019s book takes reades back to the 1993 kidnapping and murder of Polly Klaas, a 12-year-old who was taken from her bedroom during a sleepover at her home in Petaluma, California. Cross tells the story largely from the insider perspective of FBI agents and other investigators who hunted in desperation for the missing girl \u2014 and changed some of their practices as a result. From the Capote contest jurors:<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Literary critic Don Noble drew from contest jurors comments, which compared Cross\u2019 Cross\u2019 work to Capote\u2019s groundbreaking non-fiction style.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Although this is not a novel, the facts in this meticulous true crime report are as enthralling as they were in Capote\u2019s In Cold Blood, carrying the reader along and showing the emotional effects of the kidnapping and the investigation on everyone involved: family, friends, police. All over the country, millions were emotionally engaged in the search. It is not an exaggeration to say that for a while Polly was \u201cAmerica\u2019s Child.\u201d<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The true crime narrative of the FBI hunt for the kidnapper of 12-year-old Polly Klaas is compared to the literary style of “In Cold Blood”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"topics":[],"authors":[3],"issue":[],"class_list":["post-2512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-narrative-news","authors-jacqui-banaszynski"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nKim Cross wins Truman Capote nonfiction award - Nieman Storyboard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2024\/01\/31\/kim-cross-wins-truman-capote-nonfiction-award\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Kim Cross wins Truman Capote nonfiction award - 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