Articles

Why is it so great? This is not only one of the best one-word sentences in a memoir, it’s also possibly the only one-word chapter in a memoir. And the…

If Dan Barry has a beat, it is humanity — humanity as it reckons with its triumphs and travesties, and, sometimes, its profound secrets.[pq]Why does Barry begin a story about…

This week’s One Great Sentence, by the novelist John Cheever, has stayed with me all week. It’s an existential matter for writers and artists of all types, the battle between…

“The Uncounted,” Azmat Khan and Anand Gopal’s exhaustively reported investigation into the scale of civilian casualties in the U.S.-led coalition’s fight against ISIS, begins, like many disaster narratives, with a…

In August 1991, I read John Cheever’s journal excerpts published in The New Yorker. I was a 19-year-old college dropout, a waitress, and in the half hour before starting my shift,…

Elizabeth Weil, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and Outside, says she doesn’t write about “super important” things. But her warm and captivating voice has animated every…

Friends sometimes tell me to take off my rose-colored spectacles, but I was determined to start out 2018 with a bit of inspiration on Storyboard — from some of our…

The Power of Narrative: Telling True Stories in Turbulent TimesMarch 23-25Boston UniversityBoston, MassachusettsIt looks like the longest-running narrative journalism conference is making a point of spotlighting great female journalists and…

This line comes from the last of Eliot’s “Four Quartets,” and it is a sometimes terrifying poem, full of fiery images like this striking one:The dove descending breaks the air…

As audience development editor at Longreads, it’s my job to encourage readers to find and share unforgettable stories. Stories that help us understand this world. Stories that imagine a better…