Literary nonfiction. Creative nonfiction. Factual fiction. Documentary narrative. The literature of actuality. This powerful, ever-controversial genre is called by many names.

Whatever you call it, it is a form of storytelling as old as the telling of stories. The genre recognizes both the inherent power of the real and the deep resonance of the literary. It is a form that allows a writer both to narrate facts and to search for truth, blending the empirical eye of the reporter with the moral vision -- the I -- of the novelist.

In a culture saturated by data without context, facts without insight and information without enlightenment, literary nonfiction holds a special and vital place.

"Facts... they lie unquestioned, uncombined," wrote the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill
Is daily spun, but there exists no loom
To weave it into fabric.

But the loom does exist. Literary nonfiction is the loom.

Throughout the centuries, inventive hybrid writers, from (novelist) Daniel DeFoe to (journalist) John Hersey to (essayist) Joan Didion have helped construct it. The stories they have woven on this loom are about real people, real places and real emotions.

They are timely stories that tap into the moment. But they are also timeless tales that transcend it. This is because literary nonfiction is able to tell both the small story -- the damming of a river, the building of a house, a murder -- and the bigger one, the human narrative with its enduring themes.

The "literary" in literary nonfiction pertains to the exploration of these themes. It also defines how the story itself is told. Literary nonfiction writers commonly use the techniques of fiction, including creation of a narrative arc, character development, scene-setting, action sequences, dialog and interior monolog. The true stories they write using these techniques have the drama of fiction and force of fact.

Literary nonfiction takes shape in many forms, from reportage to memoir, from personal essay to biography. Nature writing, travel writing and science writing all have their literary practitioners. The true crime "novel" is an artifact of literary nonfiction. Writers in the genre tackle everything from prison riots to orchid collecting, from fifth grade classrooms to nuclear disasters, from wilderness hiking to frozen orange juice.