Articles

“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.”

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…
August 16, 2017
Kari Howard
Pat Beall and "Sexually abused as a child: A Post reporter's journey to finding hope"

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

Pat Beall’s distinguished career at The Palm Beach Post has been marked by exhaustive and meticulous investigations.[pq]”I knew I did not want to create a parade of horrors, and in…
August 15, 2017
Scott Gold
The journalistic power of empathy: making connections that elevate the writing

The journalistic power of empathy: making connections that elevate the writing

Empathy is one of the greatest gifts a journalist can have. If you come by it naturally, you can actually feel what your subject is feeling, and that can be a…
August 11, 2017
Kari Howard
5(ish) Questions: Maud Newton and her science-meets-personal-essay "I, Rodent"

5(ish) Questions: Maud Newton and her science-meets-personal-essay “I, Rodent”

A few days ago, I had the disturbing experience of stepping barefoot on the bloody, decapitated body of a mouse. My first reaction was of course a back-wheeling step away…
August 10, 2017
Kari Howard

“In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.”

—F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Great Gatsby."
August 9, 2017
Kari Howard
How a midcareer print writer mastered the "magic stick" in a 9-week radio Hogwarts

How a midcareer print writer mastered the “magic stick” in a 9-week radio Hogwarts

Nearly two years ago, I was one of dozens of Los Angeles Times reporters who took a buyout and left the paper. I liked my job almost all the time.…
August 8, 2017
Lee Romney
"Lolita," lobsters and David Foster Wallace: Now that's what we call a party

“Lolita,” lobsters and David Foster Wallace: Now that’s what we call a party

The annual Maine Lobster Festival is underway, so it seemed like a good time to go big on lobsters. Of course, festival organizers might not have been huge fans of David…
August 4, 2017
Kari Howard
Notable Narrative: Nicole Lucas Haimes and "Who Killed Julian Pierce?"

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

The article “Who Killed Julian Pierce?” was unusual on at least three counts. It was the author’s first magazine story. It took nearly 30 years to write. And it came…
August 3, 2017
Katia Savchuk

“Imagine me; I shall not exist if you do not imagine me; try to discern the doe in me, trembling in the forest of my own iniquity; let’s even smile a little.”

Why is it great? Nabokov is masterful here, not just stylistically but emotionally. He interrupts Humbert Humbert’s grotesque pursuit of Lolita by having him address the reader directly with an…
August 2, 2017
Kari Howard
Why's This So Good? David Foster Wallace and the brilliant "Consider the Lobster"

Why’s This So Good? David Foster Wallace and the brilliant “Consider the Lobster”

Take a moment to bask in the splendor of the piece that maddened many Gourmet readers in 2004
August 1, 2017
Ryan Marnane