Andrea Pitzer is the author of three books of narrative nonfiction that explore untold histories. She was the editor of Nieman Storyboard from 2009-2012,
We’re thrilled to hear this morning that Iran has freed detained journalist (and 2009 Nieman fellow) Dorothy Parvaz. Alan Cowell and J. David Goodman reported in The New York Times that, without advance notice, Dorothy called her fiancé, … Read more
[UPDATE: Good news! Iran has allowed Dorothy to return to Qatar. For more information, read our post on Dorothy’s release.] At a Nieman Foundation gathering over the weekend in Cambridge, a decade’s worth of current and former fellows … Read more
This week’s Notable Narrative,”What If Osama Bin Laden Had Been Captured?,” recounts the interrogation of Saddam Hussein, taking readers through recent history to a … Read more
From Leslie Jamison’s account of the extreme, bizarre Barkley Marathon to Christopher Hitchens’ meditation on what it means to lose the thing that has helped define him as a writer, here are some of the most interesting things that have … Read more
What does it take to make a great story? Boston University’s “The Power of Narrative” conference, held on campus April 29-30, aimed to offer some insights. The event included the kind of writing techniques and “show don’t tell” advice … Read more
Yesterday our Editors’ Roundtable looked at “When a diver goes missing, a deep cave is scene of a deeper mystery,” by Ben Montgomery. An enterprise reporter at the St. Petersburg Times, Montgomery was a 2010 Pulitzer finalist with the … Read more
This month, the Editors’ Roundtable looks at “When a diver goes missing, a deep cave is scene of a deeper mystery” by Ben Montgomery of the St. Petersburg Times. The story, our first newspaper narrative for the Roundtable, tells the … Read more
We spoke last week with Eliza Griswold, winner of the 2011 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize for “The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam.” … Read more
Our latest Notable Narrative comes from The Washington Post’s Eli Saslow, who wrote about a Wisconsin man’s attempt to understand what the federal budget debate means for his family. In addition to working seven years at the Post … Read more
Our latest Notable Narrative is a story from The Washington Post about Clarence Cammers, a Wisconsin man who asks a question at a town hall meeting with his congressman. So many of the narratives we choose focus on … Read more
