Patricia Leavy, herself both a highly published qualitative researcher and a novelist, explores the overlaps and intersections between these two ways of understanding and describing human experience, including a methodological introduction and five stories showing these methods in action.

Part I Fiction as Research Practice; Chapter 1 Blurred Genres: The Intertwining of Fiction and Nonfiction; Chapter 2 The Possibilities of Fiction-Based Research: Portraying Lives in Context; Chapter 3 Designing a Project: Fiction-Based Research Practice; Chapter 4 Evaluating Fiction-Based Research; Part II Exemplars with Commentary; Short Stories; Chapter 5 The Scrub Club, Elizabeth Bloom; Chapter 6 Visual Music, John L. Vitale; Novella; Chapter 7 The Wrong Shoe, Elizabeth de Freitas; Novels; Chapter 8 Waiting Room, Cheryl Dellasega; Chapter 9 Low-Fat Love, Patricia Leavy; Part III Conclusion; Chapter 10 Fiction as Pedagogy;