Author

Constance Hale

@sinandsyntax

Constance Hale is a California journalist and the author of six books, including the writing primer Sin and Syntax. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the LA Times, the Atlantic, Honolulu, Smithsonian, Wired, and many other newspapers and magazines. From 2007-2010 she taught writing at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism, and she directed three conferences during her tenure there.

Beyond Rape

Newspapers struggle with representing incendiary topics in a way that explains without exploiting. Last month, The Plain Dealer’s Joanna Connors addressed sexual assault, poverty, and race in a single project.…
June 6, 2008

Viewing Life from the Roof

An anti-profile, Jeffrey Fleishman’s “Viewing Life from the Roof,” is a series of snapshots from the life of Alia Qotb, who lives on an anonymous rooftop in Cairo. In  language…
May 2, 2008

Aging Father Agonizes over Fate of His Son

In this story of a father who takes care of his autistic adult son, reporter Maureen O’Hagan adroitly sketches the dilemma caused by longer life expectancies for people with developmental disabilities.…
April 28, 2008

Let’s Die Together

In “Let’s Die Together,” which ran in The Atlantic in May 2007, strangers in Japan join online networks with the express purpose of meeting and killing themselves. David Samuels serves…
April 4, 2008

Climbing a Ladder Made of Lipstick

In “Climbing a Ladder Made of Lipstick,” Los Angeles Times reporter Molly Hennessy-Fiske looks at the day-to-day life of immigrant entrepreneurs who are transforming that quintessential American business, Mary Kay…
April 4, 2008

The Conciliator

Larissa MacFarquhar’s “The Conciliator” rises above other narratives appearing this primary season, much as its subject later rose to surprise Hillary Clinton, among other seasoned politicos. Amid the breaking-news accounts…
February 1, 2008

The Fight for Sugar Hill

The story we’ve chosen this month, “The Fight for Sugar Hill,” centers on an itinerant pastor’s efforts to help the residents of a dead-end housing project in Texas’ richest county.…
January 4, 2008

Anguish in the Ruins of Mutanabi Street

Coverage of the war in Iraq, now in its fifth year, always runs the risk of reader fatigue. Daily headlines swim in the wake of militaries and militias. But with…
December 21, 2007

The Answers in the Wind

Second-day disaster stories, or eighth-day disaster stories, often merely tote up possessions damaged and lives lost. Not so with “The Answers in the Wind,” in which Washington Post reporter Tamara…
November 2, 2007

Grandmasters in Guayaberas

Occasionally a story strikes our fancy because of the sheer surprise of the subject. And so we were smitten by “Grandmasters in Guayaberas,” Josh Schonwald’s piece in the Miami New…
October 5, 2007