This is a piece with a somewhat boilerplate topic: a child in need of radical surgery and her mother’s emotional struggles. But we thought Theriault did well in reporting for the thoughts and feelings of the mother. The piece, Theriault wrote us, “was my first shot at a real narrative. I played around with the scenes and tenses. It was difficult in the extremely limited time confines of my small (25,000 circulation) newspaper. While I was working on this, I was also writing stories about a plus-sized yoga class, a local comedy show and a car crash, among other things. The story is fairly simple, but I hope that it illuminates some larger human conflicts.”
Read “Risky Surgery Gives Baby a Shot at a Brighter Future,” by Michelle Theriault