Is there any place for the "truth" in writing?

As you can see from my last post, I have never kept a blog before. Apologies for the very formal tone, I am glad to see from other posts that I can now write more or less from thought process so here goes:

I was interested to discover from The Autobiographer's Handbook edited by Jennifer Traig, about the attitude of different non-fictional writers during the writing process and what they have learnt from past publications of their work. Caroline Kraus says that: Keeping to the truth is my chief policy, though that is not reason enough to write about someone. I think it’s a case-by-case decision, but in my view, knowingly hurting someone in print, even with the truth, had better serve an unimpeachable purpose. [...] it may happen that feelings are hurt in spite of honest and honourable intentions. So it’s something to weigh carefully in every instance.

Steve Almond on the other hand emphasizes how when writing about one's family you sometimes have to deal with the consequences of revealing the truth.
...you have to be able to go home again, so if there are relatives whose feelings you would hurt by writing about them, then you have to weigh that-not hurting them-against your desire to tell that particular set of truths to the world.

The requirements for writing non-fiction seem pretty clear, you write the truth or you don't. Yet sometimes hiding the truth can be just as hurtful as exaggerating or lying about it. There is often a fear that we are making our fiction seem unrealistic without an element of the truth or our non-fiction seem less dramatic without an element of fiction, and the freedom doesn't end here, we just have to be respectful of our subjects and be aware of what we reveal to our readers as "the truth" as it is never purely fact or fiction.

Is a writer, as an artist, special and, if so, how?

Everyone is unique as a character due to life experience. However, an artist is special; an artist has the drive and the confidence to present themselves to their audience honestly. An artist is vulnerable yet fearless to sacrifice.

If a writer is to become an artistic success they must also be completely open, presenting us with a new and unique craft to study. A writer intervenes with whatever life experiences have inspired them to provide an original combination of literary elements and a new journey for the reader. This personal and courageous transformation evokes recognition of the familiar within the reader yet also a desire to explore the unknown. It is a writer's loyalty to themselves which in turn provides loyal readers.

There have been many writers who have been restricted in what they can publish during their lifetime due to various social conventions. One of those is the poet Emily Dickinson who although as a young woman was able to gain a college degree, a great rarity in 1840's New England, was still subjected to the strict conformities of women at the time. She published fewer than thirty poems in her lifetime, yet her determination to accept the dangers of pushing those boundaries gained her a voice and work to be admired for literary generations to follow.

For a woman of the time Dickinson was strong willed and true to her work. Helen McNeil explains that; when editors insisted on conventionalizing her work, she felt her poems 'robbed' from her and withdrew from publishing.

Dickinson expands upon her feelings in poem 709:
"Publication - is the Auction/ Of the Mind."