The day Molly Ivins died in 2007, Margaret Engel called up her twin sister Allison and told her they had to write a play about the wisecracking Texas political columnist who stuck George W. Bush with the nickname “Shrub.” … Read more
The 2014 Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference opens Friday at the University of North Texas. The Saturday and Sunday workshops are full but you can still register for the keynote events. This year’s speakers are authors David Quammen, Lawrence … Read more
If only we could start an international narrative-journalism conference crawl — sort of like a pub crawl, but with pencils and notebooks — here’s how we’d map out the year: “Power of Narrative: Staying Savvy, Skilled and Solvent in Journalism’s Wired … Read more
I’m old enough to have practiced as a state prosecutor for a while, but I still laugh at fart jokes. Regardless of the flatulent punch line, Larry the Cable Guy’s trademark quip, “I don’t care who you are, that’s funny … Read more
The New School and ProPublica co-hosted a panel on long-form journalism last night at The New School’s Tishman Auditorium in New York City. David Remnick of the The New Yorker, Ira Glass of “This American Life,” … Read more
The New Yorker put the “long” in long-form this week with “The Apostate: Paul Haggis vs. the Church of Scientology,” a piece by Lawrence Wright that weighs in at around 25,000 words. The article has generated a lot … Read more
The long-form buzz this last week has been all about Lawrence Wright’s piece on Scientology for the New Yorker, “The Apostate.” It’s ostensibly a profile, but it’s also investigative journalism and a compelling narrative. Wright’s deft storytelling was recently … Read more
When I first read the New Journalism manifestos by Tom Wolfe in the late 1970s, they changed forever my vision of narrative. In spite of my Ph.D. in English, I realized for the first time that a narrative had parts … Read more