Articles

Probing a Mind for a Cure

This story received the AAAS best science writing award in 2006 for newspapers and appears in Best Science Writing 2007, edited by Gina Kolata. It’s a fine example of both…

Blighted Homeland

This is one of those stories that makes us believe all over again in journalism, in its power to bring truth to light. Pasternak’s use of narrative in certain chapters…

The Zen of Joan Didion

This is a good one for the religion file. It’s a big quote-heavy, narratively speaking, but the voice is quietly companionable, intelligent, sympathetic but detached—a good narrative voice. Writing for…

Kerouac Express Steams Through the Heartland

We liked Pierce’s breezy, almost jazzy tone in this piece, the ways she reaches out to her readers. We found some language a bit hard to follow, but overall enjoyed…

Natural Narratives

[Editor’s Note: These comments are adapted from a talk given by Michael Pollan at the 2006 Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism.] Book by book, project by project, it’s usually hard…

Dust and Snow

This piece is one in a series of stories Nijhuis wrote for the High Country News that uses narrative techniques to get at the complicated issue of climate change. This…

Science’s Glacial Strides

This is travel writing brought to science. Nijhuis joins a group of scientists and students at a camp on a glacier. She’s a seasoned writer on the environment; her pieces…

Jamestown Mystery: A Grave Story

This is another narative-as-scientific-mystery by Tennant, in which she creates suspense by drawing us into the lives of early settlers, raising a question and proceeding—with strong voice and narrative structure—to…

Desperate Parents Chase a Stem-Cell Miracle

This piece was part of a package that won a 2005 Pulitzer Prize in explanatory reporting. Cook uses narrative in this piece to show the “real people” who could be…

The Fastest Man on Earth

This is an excerpt from “The Guinea Pig Doctors,” a book by Jon Franklin and John Sutherland about eight doctors who experimented on themselves in pursuit of knowledge. In this…