I only saw my great-aunt a few times – she lived far away – but in my family, she was kind of a legend. She wore purple every day, and kept a stash of…

What would happen if you disappeared today? What if no one noticed?In our latest Notable Narrative, St. Petersburg Times reporter Michael Kruse collects relics of the life of Kathryn Norris,…

The final session of last month's Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference offered The Washington Post’s Gene Weingarten in conversation with Brian Sweany, deputy editor of Texas Monthly. Weingarten, who does a…

On a bright autumn morning, a man drives into the wilderness of the Utah mountains. As he arrives, the sun glows, the clouds float, the aspens glimmer in a passing…

Our latest Editors’ Roundtable looks at Michael Mooney’s story “Blindsided: The Jerry Joseph Basketball Scandal,” from the July issue of GQ. Mooney, a staff writer for D Magazine, previously worked for…

Our first Roundtable of August considers “Blindsided: The Jerry Joseph Basketball Scandal,” by Michael Mooney. The story spotlights a high school basketball player who stirred up questions about truth and…

I first read “Letter from Bogota” in a Latin American History class in college. About 50 kids were crammed into an old, long lecture hall, the kind you see in movies…

How true does a memoir have to be? That question has been the basis of an ongoing debate kicked off by the revelation, five years ago, that much of James…

We tend now to think of Hollywood’s hackneyed, would-be blockbusters as a new phenomenon, one borne of desperation, unprecedented cynicism and the rise of narrative television. But Raymond Chandler's wonderful…

We recently talked by Skype with David Dobbs about the mystery that began with his mother’s dying wish. Dobbs’ years of efforts to solve that mystery eventually became “My Mother’s…