Articles

Esquire goes home with Philip Roth

Our latest Notable Narrative turns cliché upside down to see what will fall out of its pockets. Maybe you can’t go home again, but Esquire’s Scott Raab wants to see…
May 27, 2011
Andrea Pitzer

The power of place: Robert Caro on setting at the 2011 BIO Conference

“Show, don’t tell” is a mantra of narrative writers everywhere, but even the most useful adage can lose meaning with repetition. Before a lunchtime audience of writers at the Second…
May 24, 2011
Andrea Pitzer
Amy Ellis Nutt on writing a Pulitzer-winning story: tell "readers something they don't know"

Amy Ellis Nutt on writing a Pulitzer-winning story: tell "readers something they don’t know"

The Star-Ledger's Amy Ellis Nutt won this year's Pulitzer Prize for feature writing with “The Wreck of the Lady Mary,” her five-chapter story on the sinking of a scallop boat off…
May 20, 2011
Andrea Pitzer

What we’re watching: musical fracking, award-winning photojournalism, and documentaries from Cannes

From a groovy explainer to a broken contortionist, here are some visual experiences worth a look.“My Water’s on Fire Tonight (The Fracking Song),” by David Holmes, Andrew Bean, Niel Bekker,…
May 18, 2011
Andrea Pitzer

Dorothy Parvaz released from detention in Iran

We’re thrilled to hear this morning that Iran has freed detained journalist (and 2009 Nieman fellow) Dorothy Parvaz. Alan Cowell and J. David Goodman reported in The New York Times…
May 18, 2011
Andrea Pitzer
2009 Nieman fellow Dorothy Parvaz detained: the scoop so far and what you can do

2009 Nieman fellow Dorothy Parvaz detained: the scoop so far and what you can do

[UPDATE: Good news! Iran has allowed Dorothy to return to Qatar. For more information, read our post on Dorothy’s release.]At a Nieman Foundation gathering over the weekend in Cambridge, a…
May 16, 2011
Andrea Pitzer

What’s in a name? Washingtonian renames and resurrects a story

This week's Notable Narrative,"What If Osama Bin Laden Had Been Captured?," recounts the interrogation of Saddam Hussein, taking readers through recent history to a more speculative present. The story, a…
May 13, 2011
Andrea Pitzer

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