The History of Nonfiction November

Yesterday I wrote about my thoughts on Nonfiction November, where a lot of bloggers have chosen to read nonfiction books and share their thoughts. For example, a blog I follow called Based on a True Story has been reviewing a number of nonfiction books throughout the month, and has encouraged quite a few other bloggers to share nonfiction they have read, including food writing.

In response to my post, a FB friend asked if Nonfiction November was a reaction to NaNoWriMo -- National November Writing Month -- in which participants write a work of fiction (another collective activity that I haven't signed up for). I did a brief search and it looks to me as if a couple of bloggers invented Nonfiction November in 2013. They had been creating theme months, where a number of bloggers read and posted on a single type of book. For November that year, they described specified variations on nonfiction books: some of the bloggers this year are still using similar weekly themes. They did not mention NaNo in their posts at that time, though NaNo was invented in 1999 and had a very large following by 2013.

Evidently, the idea spread, and Goodreads seems to have first published a list of books recommended specifically for Nonfiction November in 2017, and has done so every year The two blogs that started this are now inactive. These blogs were: Sophisticated Dorkiness and Regular Rumination.

It's all become a very big deal, I guess. Here's the Goodreads banner for this year:

Does anyone have more information about how and when Nonfiction November got started? As far as I can see it doesn't even have a Wikipedia page yet: though I bet someone makes one soon!

This post written by Mae Sander, © 2019 for maefood dot blogspot dot com. 

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