5 Questions

Q&A: How a letter, honesty and patience won the trust of a shamed school cop

Washington Post narrative writer Eli Saslow answers an essential question: "How'd he get that guy to talk to him?"

By Pat Walters • August 16, 2018

Manuel and Patricia Oliver, parents of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting victim Joaquin Oliver, hold hands as they speak to the media in Miami during a June 5, 2018, news conference reacting to former sheriff's deputy Scot Peterson interview airing on NBC's

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One Great Sentence

“During six Sundays, he never varied his routine, faithful as a migratory mallard, his route taking him through a neighborhood of apartments that all seemed to be dying of boredom.”

Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen

By Jacqui Banaszynski • August 15, 2018

Annotation Tuesday!

Immigration reporting from the inside-out: through the mouths and eyes of babes

Dan Barry and a team of New York Times reporters channel the voices of children held in migrant detention camps

By Traci Angel • August 13, 2018

Featured Contributors

Steve Oney

Katia Savchuk

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Investigative Reporting Short Narratives Tom Junod Poverty Narrative Journalism
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Notable Narratives

Can you say … Thanks, and we miss you?

By Matt Tullis
July 13, 2018

On Mister Rogers, Tom Junod and the art of reverence

Notable Narratives

Writing through a whiteout: David Grann and “The White Darkness”

By Steve Oney
March 13, 2018

In his New Yorker piece on an explorer following Shackleton's footsteps in Antarctica, the reporter struggled through his own writing blizzard

Notable Narratives

Notable Narrative: Jack Hitt and the birth of live-action TV news in “What Goes Up”

By Katia Savchuk
December 12, 2017

For Epic magazine, he writes about a daredevil helicopter pilot for a Phoenix station who "kept breaking the fourth wall of journalism by beating the cops"

Notable Narratives

Notable Narrative: The Cincinnati Enquirer’s stunning “Seven Days of Heroin”

By Katia Savchuk
September 25, 2017

A writer and editor talk about wrangling 60 staffers and a deluge of copy -- and creating a riveting portrait of the human face of the opioid epidemic

Notable Narratives

Notable Narrative: The Marshall Project’s Maurice Chammah and “The Accusation”

By Katia Savchuk
September 12, 2017

The reporter talks about his piece, published jointly with Esquire, on a recanted allegation of child sex abuse that had sent a father to prison

Notable Narratives

The late Alex Tizon and “My Family’s Slave”: his first memory, and his last byline

By Jacqui Banaszynski
September 5, 2017

The Atlantic story, published just weeks after his death, drew a firestorm of criticism; a Pulitzer winner and friend examines the craft, and the loss

Notable Narratives

Notable Narrative: Joe Kovac Jr. and a tale of murder, a manhunt and a midnight run

By Steve Oney
August 29, 2017

The reporter for Georgia's Macon Telegraph shows that even on regional newspapers with tiny staffs, writers can dream large with gripping narratives

Notable Narratives

Pat Beall and “Sexually abused as a child: A Post reporter’s journey to finding hope”

By Scott Gold
August 15, 2017

The Palm Beach Post investigative journalist talks about why she decided to write about her long-ago trauma -- and her struggles with first person

Notable Narratives

Notable Narrative: Nicole Lucas Haimes and “Who Killed Julian Pierce?”

By Katia Savchuk
August 3, 2017

The writer and documentary filmmaker talks about a story on a murdered Native American activist that was nearly 30 years in the making -- and became an obsession

Notable Narratives

Notable Narrative: Luke Mogelson and “The Desperate Battle to Destroy ISIS”

By Francesca Borri
July 10, 2017

The writer talks about his tour-de-force story for The New Yorker about an Iraqi SWAT team's fight to save their city -- and the price they paid to do it

Notable Narratives

Notable Narrative: Jason Fagone and “What Bullets Do to Bodies”

By Davis Harper
June 26, 2017

The writer talks about his Huffington Post Highline profile of a trauma surgeon, and wanting readers to get a “visceral sense of what physically happens inside a person when he’s shot”

Notable Narratives

Notable Narrative: Susan Dominus and “Is an Open Marriage a Happier Marriage?”

By Davis Harper
June 20, 2017

The New York Times Magazine writer talks about how her controversial story changed her views on non-monogamy -- and made her appreciate her own marriage more

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