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Want to read some of the best literary journalism of 2017? We've got you covered

Want to read some of the best literary journalism of 2017? We’ve got you covered

A weekly roundup of some favorite things, for your reading and listening pleasure
December 22, 2017
Kari Howard
"Draft No. 4": the legendary John McPhee's "master class in the writer's craft"

“Draft No. 4”: the legendary John McPhee’s “master class in the writer’s craft”

John McPhee’s great subject has always been work. From his first book, “A Sense of Where You Are,” which came out in 1965 and portrays basketball star and Rhodes Scholar…
December 21, 2017
David L. Ulin

“We were taken to the ‘Oh, My God, Corner,’ a position near the escalator. People arriving see the long line and say “Oh, my God!” and it’s an elf’s job to calm them down and explain that it will take no longer than an hour to see Santa.”

It’s hard to cull just one sentence from Sedaris’ embedded reporting on being a helper at Santaland, a place he describes as “a real wonderland” with a path taking visitors…
December 20, 2017
Julia Shipley
A veteran freelancer on pitching The New York Times Magazine and more

A veteran freelancer on pitching The New York Times Magazine and more

Reporter (and editor) Paul Tullis has been on both sides of the pitching process; here, he annotates his "Into the Wildfires" proposal
December 19, 2017
Katia Savchuk
"Something waits beneath it; the whole story doesn't show." (Haunted by this.)

“Something waits beneath it; the whole story doesn’t show.” (Haunted by this.)

The final half of this week’s One Great Sentence has stayed with me: “Something waits beneath it; the whole story doesn’t show.” It’s about the winter landscape, but couldn’t it also apply…
December 15, 2017
Kari Howard
Liana Aghajanian and the story of immigrants in America, one recipe at a time

Liana Aghajanian and the story of immigrants in America, one recipe at a time

Freelance journalist and essayist Liana Aghajanian has hopscotched around the globe, reporting on stories as far apart as the first record store in Mongolia, an Arizona man looking for “the…
December 14, 2017
Olga Kreimer

“I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape — the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it; the whole story doesn’t show.”

Why is it great? A few weeks ago I went to an exhibit of Andrew Wyeth’s paintings in Seattle (a strange experience for someone who lives half an hour from…
December 13, 2017
Kari Howard
Jack Hitt on the birth of live-action TV news in "What Goes Up"

Jack Hitt on the birth of live-action TV news in “What Goes Up”

When Jack Hitt got an assignment to write about Jerry Foster, a daredevil helicopter pilot who worked for a TV station in Phoenix in the ’70s and ’80s, he thought…
December 12, 2017
Katia Savchuk
What does poetry have to do with journalism? Quite a bit, actually. Read on.

What does poetry have to do with journalism? Quite a bit, actually. Read on.

It was Poetry Week on Storyboard, which is pushing the envelope a bit for a site that explores the art and craft of narrative nonfiction. But I would argue that…
December 8, 2017
Kari Howard
Poetry finds a (calming) home in the hurly-burly of 21st century New York

Poetry finds a (calming) home in the hurly-burly of 21st century New York

Just a stone’s throw away from the high-finance hustle of the World Trade Center in NYC, I came across a simple blue-and-white sign on a glass door that read: The…
December 7, 2017
Jasmine Bager