Paige Williams writes for The New Yorker and is an associate professor at the Missouri School of Journalism. Winner of the National Magazine Award for feature writing in 2008, and a finalist in 2011 and 2009 (shared) , she has been anthologized in five volumes of the Best American series, including twice in The Best American Magazine Writing. She is the former editor of Nieman Storyboard and has taught narrative nonfiction at Harvard, M.I.T., NYU, Emory, the University of Pittsburgh, and at her alma mater, the University of Mississippi. She was a ’97 Nieman Fellow and holds an MFA in fiction from Columbia University. Her narrative nonfiction book “The Dinosaur Artist” is forthcoming, from Hachette, in Fall 2016.
We love a great war story and we love a great love story, and good Lord did Jaimee Rose of the Arizona Republic deliver both with “Question of a Lifetime,” our latest Notable Narrative. Rose is a Republic features … Read more
Every spring, the City and Regional Magazine Association names a Writer of the Year, and twice the organization has handed Justin Heckert that honor. Heckert won recently for Atlanta magazine stories about … Read more
Great story ideas come by luck but also with the hard work of searching, pre-reporting and thinking. From our archives, here are a few timeless pro tips for idea-mining. Follow the links to longer pieces on story craft. … Read more
From the moment David Grann’s “The Yankee Comandante” appeared in the New Yorker last week, readers have been talking about it, hailing the tale of political intrigue, passion and heartbreak as unforgettable, as a masterpiece. Grann, of course, … Read more
Our new Notable Narrative, “The Yankee Comandante,” by New Yorker staff writer David Grann, is part love story, part political drama, part spy thriller. Published last week, it’s the saga of William Morgan, an American ne’er-do-well who drifted from … Read more
In “Grace in Broken Arrow,” our newest Notable Narrative, Brooklyn-based freelancer Kiera Feldman unfurls an investigative story about child sex abuse and institutional accountability at a private evangelical Christian school outside of Tulsa, Okla. The piece ran … Read more
Our latest Notable Narrative is “Grace in Broken Arrow,” by Brooklyn-based freelancer Kiera Feldman. The long-form investigative narrative, about a child-sex-abuse scandal at Grace Fellowship Christian School outside Tulsa, Oklahoma, ran last week, connecting previously obscure facts of a … Read more
When Buzz Bissinger visited the Nieman Foundation last week, in some ways he was coming home. Twenty-six years ago, he finished his Nieman year inspired to do new and different work. He’d made his career in newspapers, most recently at the … Read more
Narrative legend Buzz Bissinger, whose books include A Prayer for the City and the No. 1 New York Times best-seller Friday Night Lights, visited his alma mater the Nieman Foundation last week for a long talk … Read more
If you’ve ever spent some time nosing around Storyboard you know we archive everything from interactive narratives to original essays on craft, in which masters such as Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, Rick Meyer and Walt Harrington offer tips on developing characters, … Read more