When literary magazine McSweeney’s Quarterly jumped into the newspaper business for their winter issue, much of the buzz was about the concept. A literary quarterly does a newspaper? Layout was debated, along with cost and replicability. But inside “Panorama” lurked a delightful, messy nonfiction narrative by Wajahat Ali.
“Wells Fargo, You Never Knew What Hit You” stars Ali, [...]
Author Archives: Andrea Pitzer
Wajahat Ali in McSweeney’s “Panorama”: the American financial collapse as sitcom
March 11, 2010 – 12:12 pm
Walk on the wild side: animal stories that don’t stand up
March 8, 2010 – 3:51 pm
When it comes to wildlife narratives, writer Bryan Christy wants more accountability from reporters.
Christy wrote us in response to our Friday issue of the Narrative Digest, which featured coverage of a zoo, a history of animal experimentation, and an essay on a vet in Sierra Leone, among other articles. He added another a item to the list of issues raised by [...]
Aminatta Forna’s “The Last Vet”: a dog’s life
March 4, 2010 – 2:23 pm
Our latest Notable Narrative traces relations between humans and animals in the poorest country on earth. In “The Last Vet,” which appeared in the winter 2009 issue of Granta, writer Aminatta Forna follows Dr. Gudush Jalloh, the last veterinarian in private practice in Sierra Leone, as he treats and sterilizes dogs at his Freetown clinic.
Living [...]
Chris Jones, Roger Ebert and the possibilities of online narrative (or “does this story ever end?”)
March 2, 2010 – 3:19 pm
When it comes to writing profiles, Esquire’s Chris Jones is used to getting the last word. But a few weeks ago, when Jones worked his storytelling mojo on Roger Ebert, he took on someone who had his own platform and his own audience.
“I knew Roger was writing about the story,” Jones told us via email, [...]
Paul Raeburn, Ira Glass, and just some of the ways a story can go wrong
February 24, 2010 – 6:15 pm
Yesterday, Paul Raeburn at the Knight Science Journalism Tracker took the stuffing out of a New York Times medical piece. The story, by Gardiner Harris, reveals a secret recording of a 2007 meeting between a cardiologist and executives at a pharmaceutical company. Raeburn dinged it for both structure and content, writing that “sometimes a poorly [...]
Narrative nonfiction events and conferences–is there something here for you?
February 22, 2010 – 1:54 pm
While tracking digital narrative experiments, we at Storyboard also aim to keep readers informed about the world of traditional print narratives. Today we’ve compiled a list of upcoming events for fans who want to hear from classic storytellers or learn elements of craft. Here are just a few of the opportunities available, in chronological order:
The Society of [...]
Rick Moody’s “Amazing Tale” invites readers to step right up
February 17, 2010 – 11:21 pm
Our latest Notable Narrative plays a wonderful game of fulfilling expectations in surprising ways. In the January 2010 issue of Details, Rick Moody’s “The Amazing Tale of the High School Quarterback Turned Lesbian Filmmaker” uses a bait-and-switch approach to write about a transgendered person on the verge of attending her 20th high school reunion.
The title [...]
The Small Story: long live the community-minded newspaper narrative
February 16, 2010 – 4:45 pm
Cara Solomon sweats the small stuff.
After a failed career as a television news intern and eight successful years as a print reporter, Solomon left her newspaper job on the West Coast to return home to Boston. Holding down a day job as an editor of a start-up Web site, she began to devote her free time [...]
Peggy Nelson on new media narratives: “Every Twitter account is a character”
February 12, 2010 – 5:05 pm
We talked this week with Peggy Nelson, a new media artist who has spent the last several years doing digital and virtual storytelling. While Nelson’s work is rooted in conceptual art rather than journalism, she has created stories in nearly every medium, including some we hadn’t thought of (like PowerPoint and iPhone Apps). Nelson came [...]
