Narrative News

For film week, home movies and drive-ins (and David Foster Wallace on David Lynch)

A weekly roundup of some favorite things, for your reading and listening pleasure

By Kari Howard • September 22, 2017

Abandoned East Hartford Drive-In, South Windsor, Connecticut.

Read More

5 Questions

5(ish) Questions: Photographer Lindsay Rickert and “Drive-In America”

She spent 65 days on the road, covering 12,000 miles, in search of this fast-disappearing artifact of the country's past -- and its summer memories

By Don Bartletti • September 21, 2017

One Great Sentence

“I know all about reporters, Walter. A lot of daffy buttinskis running around without a nickel in their pockets and for what? So a million hired girls and motormen’s wives’ll know what’s going on.”

Hildy Johnson to Walter Burns, "His Girl Friday"

By Kari Howard • September 20, 2017

Featured Contributors

Steve Oney

Katia Savchuk

Julia Shipley

Jasmine Bager

Julie Schwietert Collazo

More contributors

Featured topics

Investigative Reporting Short Narratives Tom Junod Poverty Narrative Journalism
Show section navigation Hide section navigation ⨂

Narrative News

It’s Southern Week on Storyboard: Read on for some great regional storytelling

By Kari Howard
September 1, 2017

A weekly roundup of some favorite things, for your reading and listening pleasure

5 Questions

Monica Hesse and “American Fire: Love, Arson, and Life in a Vanishing Land”

By Julia Shipley
August 31, 2017

The Washington Post reporter talks about what it's like to juggle multiple projects (and genres), and the virtue of capturing the way people talk

One Great Sentence

“Sometimes at noon down South on the hottest of days, when everyone is shivering inside their arctic offices, I go outside just to hear the metallic whirring of the cicadas start up in the trees on the edge of the parking lot. Their tymbals pulsate against their abdomens and the thick air reverberates with the loneliest sound in the universe.”

By Julia Shipley
August 30, 2017

In addition to the music of Blythe’s lush language, I love how he captures this brash paradox–that a chorus can make us feel so lonely. Furthermore I love how, like a quintessential writer, he stations … Read more

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

Narrative News

Love and laughter and Dorothy Parker: sounds like the name of a cool movie, no?

By Kari Howard
August 25, 2017

A weekly roundup of some favorite things, for your reading and listening pleasure

5 Questions

5(ish) Questions: Podcast producer Lily Percy and humor as a survival tool

By Roy Rivenburg
August 24, 2017

"Laughter helps us heal," she says of a 15-episode C.O.O.L. series featuring the famous (Terry McMillan) and the not-so-famous (a drag-queen-turned-rabbi)

One Great Sentence

“Take me or leave me; or, as is the usual order of things, both.”

By Kari Howard
August 23, 2017

Why is it great? Yesterday was Dorothy Parker’s birthday. (She would have been 124, reminding me of her classic line, “Time may be a great healer, but it’s a lousy beautician.”) The line above is … Read more

5 Questions

5(ish) Questions: Mandy Len Catron and “How to Fall in Love With Anyone”

By Olga Kreimer
August 22, 2017

The author of the viral Modern Love essay in The New York Times follows up with a book about romance -- and the danger of fetishizing love

Narrative News

Neo-Nazis, childhood abuse and even a solemn E.B. White — here’s to better weeks

By Kari Howard
August 18, 2017

A weekly roundup of some favorite things, for your reading and listening pleasure

5 Questions

5(ish) Questions: Andy Kopsa and the slow payoff of freelance longform work

By Alina DIzik
August 17, 2017

The writer, who alternates between shorter stories and time-consuming investigative stories, talks about the financial hardships of her career -- and offers tips to others starting out in a tough business

One Great Sentence

“Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year – the days when summer is changing into autumn – the crickets spread the rumor of sadness and change.”

By Kari Howard
August 16, 2017

Why is it great? Here in E.B. White’s Maine, August is bittersweet, bringing whispers of summer’s end even at the height of its ripeness. Apples, the fruit of fall, begin to color on gnarled trees. Read more

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

More stories