Teenage lifeguards abandon their perches to leathery veterans. The county fair’s bounty of funnel cakes and fried beer peters out. Corduroy shopping starts in earnest. The academic year begins. In honor of those entering the hallowed halls of education, reluctantly or with excitement, we offer these takes on prison, the challenges of teaching and what [...]
Category Archives: words
USA Today’s Joshua Hatch on digital storytelling, Katrina and using technology with “a narrative purpose”
We talked last week by phone with USA Today interactives director Joshua Hatch about “Five Years Later: Hurricane Katrina,” the paper’s attempt to document the recovery and continuing struggles of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. With a prologue and three chapters (Effects, Rebuilding and Unsettled), the project includes maps, interactive visuals, video and bare-bones [...]
Hank Stuever on story structure, really reporting Christmas and the problem with the “sacred space” approach to narrative
Washington Post reporter Hank Stuever writes in a variety of narrative forms, from books to punchy television reviews and features. His latest book, “Tinsel: A Search for America’s Christmas Present,” is based on time he spent in Frisco, Texas, beginning in 2006. Making good on the title’s evocations of both sweetness and Scrooge, Stuever explores [...]
Laurie Hertzel on growing up in newspapers and what she learned from the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald
In “News to Me,” Laurie Hertzel writes about life as an ink-stained wretch during nearly 20 years at the Duluth News Tribune. Now books editor at the (Minneapolis) Star Tribune, Hertzel is also an award-winning reporter and fiction writer (and occasional contributor to Nieman Storyboard). Projects and stories she has edited have won a National [...]
Richard Morgan on payback, freelancing and the myth of the “made man”
Richard Morgan recently found a new measure of fame writing about writing, with his funny/terrifying piece “Seven Years as a Freelance Writer, or, How to Make Vitamin Soup.” Though Morgan’s work has appeared in some of the best-known outlets in print journalism – from New York magazine to Wired and The New York Times – [...]
The very, very personal post: Richard Morgan, Jennifer Lawler and a new kind of Notable Narrative
Sometimes long posts appear online that would feel out of place anywhere else. These pieces are often first-person, revelatory and not edited to fit the brand of a magazine, newspaper or corporate website. While it’s hard to imagine a news organization adopting their style, these posts offer a vivid form of storytelling.
As is the case [...]
What we’re reading: in which we consider segregated high school reunions, the vanishing middle class, notes from a Pynchon conference and “death in the age of the Internet”
As we try to get the mildew out of the swimsuits we left in the corner over the weekend, we wanted to leave you a pile of stories for when you take refuge from the baking heat of August and are looking for something to read other than the rusty box of Old Bay seasoning [...]
Vanity Fair’s Bryan Burrough on writing narrative: “people are dying to put down your article”
In what might be the only performance of Texas stand-up comedy about narrative writing, Vanity Fair writer Bryan Burrough recently offered practical tips for long-form storytelling to a Mayborn Conference audience. Prior to his magazine career, Burrough spent several years reporting for The Wall Street Journal; he has also written five books, including “Public Enemies” [...]
Gary Smith on intimacy and connecting with subjects: “Any uneasiness you bring is going to cost you dearly”
On the last day of the Mayborn Conference, Sports Illustrated’s Gary Smith read from and discussed “Shadow of a Nation,” his 1991 story about a Crow basketball player named Jonathan Takes Enemy. Smith has been at Sports Illustrated for nearly two decades, winning more National Magazine Awards than any other writer. He’s known for his [...]
Mark Bowden on discovering narrative and the value of beginner’s mind: “only if you are truly ignorant can you ask the truly ignorant question”
Next up in our series of highlights from last weekend’s Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference is Mark Bowden. Author of “Black Hawk Down” and a former reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer, Bowden has been a nonfiction writer in one form or another for 35 years. In these excerpts from his keynote address, he talks about the [...]
