Ann Patchett writes about Reese Witherspoon: No celebrity dirt, a storytelling structure, lots of dialog about books and houses and feminism

The self-checkout line at my funky neighborhood grocery was wide open, but I waited for the old-fashioned line, with a checker and a bagger. I don’t like to weigh my…

When President Donald Trump staged a controversial Fourth of July celebration at Mount Rushmore, a sea of journalists covered the show. Among them: Washington Post fashion critic Robin Givhan.But Givhan…

As the daily read of crucial issues — racial injustice, the pandemic, the political divide, the battered environment, the brutal economy — expands and deepens, I keep looking for those…

Major League Baseball, that beloved summer sport, returns to a shortened season later this month. Or at least it is scheduled to, but as with all things in the time…

During the 15 years that Chip Scanlan taught writing workshops at the Poynter Institute, he wrote a popular column called “Chip on Your Shoulder.” Searching Poynter’s archives takes some work,…

At first glance, there are few frills or fireworks in “Tatiana’s Luck,” Hannah Dreier ‘s profile of an immigrant living in a crowded New Jersey house stalked by COVID-19. In the…

While reading the news in 2017, filmmaker Erin Lee Carr first saw the “very wide, intense eyes” of Michelle Carter. She looked like a “deer in headlights,” Carr said. At the time, Carter was on trial in Massachussetts on charges of…

It was the verb in this sentence in “Braiding Sweetgrass,” a reissued book of nature essays by Robin Wall Kimmerer, that captivated me. It’s a strong, active verb, so the sentence leaps where similar descriptions stroll. The…

Most 20-something sports journalists don’t find themselves covering something as raw and emotional as the aftermath of one of the deadliest natural disasters in American history. But here was Benjamin Hochman, sitting in the lobby of the Doubletree hotel in Dallas with…