Articles

What we’re reading: Hitchens speechless, marathon lunacy and a problematic police sting

From Leslie Jamison’s account of the extreme, bizarre Barkley Marathon to Christopher Hitchens’ meditation on what it means to lose the thing that has helped define him as a writer,…
May 12, 2011
Andrea Pitzer
Life in the cave: highlights from Boston University’s “The Rebirth of Storytelling” conference

Life in the cave: highlights from Boston University’s “The Rebirth of Storytelling” conference

What does it take to make a great story? Boston University’s “The Power of Narrative” conference, held on campus April 29-30, aimed to offer some insights. The event included the kind…
May 10, 2011
Andrea Pitzer
Ben Montgomery explores a mystery: "This is a story about grief"

Ben Montgomery explores a mystery: "This is a story about grief"

Yesterday our Editors’ Roundtable looked at “When a diver goes missing, a deep cave is scene of a deeper mystery,” by Ben Montgomery. An enterprise reporter at the St. Petersburg Times,…
May 5, 2011
Andrea Pitzer
May Editors' Roundtable: St. Petersburg Times dives into missing man mystery

May Editors’ Roundtable: St. Petersburg Times dives into missing man mystery

This month, the Editors’ Roundtable looks at “When a diver goes missing, a deep cave is scene of a deeper mystery” by Ben Montgomery of the St. Petersburg Times. The story, our…
May 4, 2011
Andrea Pitzer
Eliza Griswold on religion, violence and reporting

Eliza Griswold on religion, violence and reporting

We spoke last week with Eliza Griswold, winner of the 2011 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize for “The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam.” In…
May 3, 2011
Andrea Pitzer
Eli Saslow on writing news narratives, creating empathy and characters' defining moments

Eli Saslow on writing news narratives, creating empathy and characters’ defining moments

Our latest Notable Narrative comes from The Washington Post’s Eli Saslow, who wrote about a Wisconsin man’s attempt to understand what the federal budget debate means for his family. In…
April 29, 2011
Andrea Pitzer
Going small: the fragile world of a single constituent

Going small: the fragile world of a single constituent

Our latest Notable Narrative is a story from The Washington Post about Clarence Cammers, a Wisconsin man who asks a question at a town hall meeting with his congressman.So many…
April 28, 2011
Andrea Pitzer

What we're reading: marking time, bugging Franzen and the gaming culture of jihad

Here are a set of recent stories for your reading enjoyment, gathered from Los Angeles to London. They each deal with the collision between one understanding of the world and…
April 26, 2011
Andrea Pitzer
Oliver Broudy on modern saints, magazine writing and crossing the border to Kindle Singles

Oliver Broudy on modern saints, magazine writing and crossing the border to Kindle Singles

Seeing the gaggle of outlets now dedicated to digital long-form (The Atavist, Kindle Singles and Byliner Originals, just for starters), I wanted to talk to a narrative journalist who had written…
April 21, 2011
Andrea Pitzer

The 2011 Pulitzer Prizes: a sampler of narrative winners

Yesterday afternoon Columbia University announced this year’s Pulitzer Prizes in New York. So many journalists and writers were waiting online for the magic moment that the befuddled Pulitzer site was…
April 19, 2011
Andrea Pitzer