Articles

This fascinating piece is part historical narrative, part contemporary profile. From a craft point of view, we were interested in the challenge of portraying Margarete Barthel, the former SS guard,…

Getting stuck next to a compulsive talker is one of the worst things that can happen at a dinner party or on a long bus ride. Even worse: the self-centered…

We admired the balance in this piece of detachment and emotion, of distance and closeness. We appreciated the close attention to telling detail, action, gesture and also the willingness to…

This is a story about the power of story and stories: the power of telling them, of withholding them; the weight they bear in families; the power they have to…

What stands out among all the lovely elements in this series is Tizon’s use of the first and second persons. Come join me on a journey, he says. And if…

As in all of Siegel’s stories on this site, all of which cover in some sense an “endangered child,” he portrays emotional content—in this case a young boy’s death, his…

Siegel builds this piece on effective, masterful movement from story-telling through explanatory digressions and back to story. The digressions advance not just our understanding of how this girl could come…

Many—surprisingly, perhaps most—of the stories we read for this site are about, or involve, children we worry about: They're alone, ill, miseducated, lost in the system, abandoned or abused. Mark…

What consistently sets Siegel’s writing apart from many other newspaper narratives is his ability and willingness to construct an authoritative, muscular “argument.” In this case, he shows how a middle-class…

The title of this piece triggered our mawkishness radar: It signals tragedy; we wondered how such tragedy would be handled. Reading, we thought the piece teeters on the edge of…