This week’s One Great Sentence, by the novelist John Cheever, has stayed with me all week. It’s an existential matter for writers and artists of all types, the battle between the introspective and mostly solitary process of creating and the … Read more
“The Uncounted,” Azmat Khan and Anand Gopal’s exhaustively reported investigation into the scale of civilian casualties in the U.S.-led coalition’s fight against ISIS, begins, like many disaster narratives, with a banal domestic scene. But in this case, the humdrum … Read more
In August 1991, I read John Cheever’s journal excerpts published in The New Yorker. I was a 19-year-old college dropout, a waitress, and in the half hour before starting my shift, I sat outside my local library, electrified by this candid, … Read more
Elizabeth Weil, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and Outside, says she doesn’t write about “super important” things. But her warm and captivating voice has animated every subject she’s chosen to tackle over her 22-year career writing … Read more
Friends sometimes tell me to take off my rose-colored spectacles, but I was determined to start out 2018 with a bit of inspiration on Storyboard — from some of our top literary journalists, and some of the narrative conferences and … Read more
The Power of Narrative: Telling True Stories in Turbulent Times March 23-25 Boston University Boston, Massachusetts It looks like the longest-running narrative journalism conference is making a point of spotlighting great female journalists and writers this year. Read more
This line comes from the last of Eliot’s “Four Quartets,” and it is a sometimes terrifying poem, full of fiery images like this striking one: The dove descending breaks the air With flame of incandescent terror Of which … Read more
As audience development editor at Longreads, it’s my job to encourage readers to find and share unforgettable stories. Stories that help us understand this world. Stories that imagine a better one. “I truly believe writing the stories we … Read more