Articles

"Won’t it be a fine day when anthology specifically focused on women journalists won’t make any sense?”

“Won’t it be a fine day when anthology specifically focused on women journalists won’t make any sense?”

This week we spotlighted talented women on Storyboard — be they writers, performers or proto-feminists of the 18th century. I love this quote from Adrian LaBlanc, one of the women included…
November 10, 2017
Kari Howard
5(ish) Questions: Holly Gleason and "Woman Walk the Line: How the Women of Country Music Changed Our Lives"

5(ish) Questions: Holly Gleason and “Woman Walk the Line: How the Women of Country Music Changed Our Lives”

We all know music has the power to change us. I sometimes indulge in a “Sliding Doors” reverie, wondering what path my life might have taken if I hadn’t heard…
November 9, 2017
Kari Howard

“Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman’s sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.”

Why is it great? Take a look at the publication date: 1792. That’s more than two centuries ago, and two things are remarkable about this fact. 1) That Wollstonecraft, the…
November 8, 2017
Kari Howard
5(ish) Questions: Patsy Sims and "The Stories We Tell: Classic True Tales by America's Greatest Women Journalists"

5(ish) Questions: Patsy Sims and “The Stories We Tell: Classic True Tales by America’s Greatest Women Journalists”

The 1967 edition of the annual “Best Magazine Articles” anthology has six names on the cover: Gay Talese, Gore Vidal, Stephen Becker, Conrad Aiken, Conrad Knickerbocker and Tom Wolfe. Underneath…
November 7, 2017
Kari Howard
For Halloween week, supernatural podcasts and the haunting of Joan Didion

For Halloween week, supernatural podcasts and the haunting of Joan Didion

A weekly roundup of some favorite things, for your reading and listening pleasure
November 3, 2017
Kari Howard
The Joan Didion documentary: a nephew's loving portrait of "a cool customer"

The Joan Didion documentary: a nephew’s loving portrait of “a cool customer”

In her memoir about the death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne, Joan Didion writes about the night she lost the man who can only be described as her other…
November 2, 2017
Kari Howard
This American Afterlife: Aaron Mahnke and the spooky podcast (and TV show) "Lore"

This American Afterlife: Aaron Mahnke and the spooky podcast (and TV show) “Lore”

Barely three years ago, Aaron Mahnke, a part-time horror-thriller writer, sat at his computer and started to drag a document to the trashcan. Just as he was about dispose of…
October 31, 2017
Julia Shipley

“Then away out in the woods I heard that kind of a sound that a ghost makes when it wants to tell about something that’s on its mind and can’t make itself understood, and so can’t rest easy in its grave, and has to go about that way every night grieving.”

Why is it great? For Halloween, I decided to use this wonderfully spooky line from Mark Twain (who in his writing and his speaking was a true master of the…
October 30, 2017
Kari Howard
Reporting on racism in America: One writer confronted with rage, another driven by it

Reporting on racism in America: One writer confronted with rage, another driven by it

These words from journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones sum up this week’s posts on racism and white supremacism better than I ever could: “The truth is even though this is fundamental and foundational…
October 27, 2017
Kari Howard
Nikole Hannah-Jones on reporting about racial inequality: "What drives me is rage"

Nikole Hannah-Jones on reporting about racial inequality: “What drives me is rage”

New York Times Magazine writer Nikole Hannah-Jones doesn’t pretend to be an objective observer of her subject: racial segregation.[pq]”Our job as storytellers – if we want to get people to…
October 26, 2017
Kari Howard