I’m the woman who left a dream job as Column One editor at the Los Angeles Times because I wanted to move to Maine. Go figure how happiness works. Former editor of Nieman Storyboard. I love music almost as much as (and sometimes more than) beautiful storytelling, so expect to see that here too.
A spring blizzard this week left me without power for 16 hours, and at first I felt unmoored because there was no heat, no light — and no Internet connection. It revealed how plugged in my life is. But can … Read more
Why is it great? Have you ever read a book and found it hard to get over a terrible first line? You want to move on, and the other 100,000 sentences in the book may be just fine, but that … Read more
Anna Mae McNeil stares past the camera, the smudge of an old bruise under her right eye. The words “New Castle, Pa., No. 220” are written in white ink below her face. It is Feb. 5, 1933, and Anna … Read more
This week, International Women’s Day really grabbed the spotlight with the Day Without a Woman protests and homages to role models on social media (shout-out to Nieman Lab’s great Instagram posts on inspirational women journalists). But the crowds weren’t … Read more
Why is it great? With this opening line to her famous short story, Parker does so many things: She gives us an image of Hazel that’s Kodachrome clear: I can almost hear the old-fashioned pop of the flash. She also establishes Hazel … Read more
The words appear on a blank white screen, accompanied by an atonal, ominous peal of music. “One frosty October morning, a newborn baby boy is found inside a plastic bag inside an Oslo graveyard. The baby is about to die.” … Read more
We seem to have two recurring motifs going on this week on Storyboard — animals and the politicization of language. On the animal front, we have Christopher Solomon’s “cute even when it’s dead” otter, and a mouse climbing a wall in … Read more
You know when you absentmindedly click on a product and an ad for the thing seems to stalk you online for the rest of your life? (I once thought the name “Mrs. Pasture’s Horse Cookies” charming. Now, with eternal repetition, … Read more
Why is it great? This piece about mining companies exploring the bottom of the ocean creates an upside-down outer space. The whole story is a kind of extended metaphor between the exploration of space and the exploration of the … Read more
Just in time for the weekend, here’s a little list of some of the things I’ve been listening to and reading this week, some of it online — Storyboard included, natch — and some of it on vinyl or actual … Read more