Author

Kari Howard

@karihow

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.

“NOVEMBER, noun. The eleventh twelfth of a weariness.”

—Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary," 1911.
November 29, 2017
5(ish) Questions: Holly Gleason and "Woman Walk the Line: How the Women of Country Music Changed Our Lives"

5(ish) Questions: Holly Gleason and “Woman Walk the Line: How the Women of Country Music Changed Our Lives”

The editor of the new anthology talks about the joys of being subversive and using country music to talk about female empowerment
November 9, 2017

“Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman’s sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.”

—Mary Wollstonecraft, "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman," 1792.
November 8, 2017
5(ish) Questions: Patsy Sims and "The Stories We Tell: Classic True Tales by America's Greatest Women Journalists"

5(ish) Questions: Patsy Sims and “The Stories We Tell: Classic True Tales by America’s Greatest Women Journalists”

The anthology, which includes Joan Didion and Lillian Ross, puts a deserved spotlight on female writers (and perhaps will give Gay Talese a few ideas when he's next asked about…
November 7, 2017
For Halloween week, supernatural podcasts and the haunting of Joan Didion

For Halloween week, supernatural podcasts and the haunting of Joan Didion

A weekly roundup of some favorite things, for your reading and listening pleasure
November 3, 2017
The Joan Didion documentary: a nephew's loving portrait of "a cool customer"

The Joan Didion documentary: a nephew’s loving portrait of “a cool customer”

The Netflix film is touching but not sentimental, revealing her ability to be a seemingly dispassionate observer -- as a reporter and also a grieving widow
November 2, 2017

“Then away out in the woods I heard that kind of a sound that a ghost makes when it wants to tell about something that’s on its mind and can’t make itself understood, and so can’t rest easy in its grave, and has to go about that way every night grieving.”

—Mark Twain, "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn"
October 30, 2017
Nikole Hannah-Jones on reporting about racial inequality: "What drives me is rage"

Nikole Hannah-Jones on reporting about racial inequality: “What drives me is rage”

At the Power of Storytelling conference, the writer talks about Charlottesville and entrenched racism that reaches back 400 years in America
October 26, 2017

“Along with these tots and second-honeymooners, there were Harvard freshmen … “

—John Updike, "Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu," The New Yorker, October 22, 1960.
October 25, 2017

“There was a kind of autumnal stain in the air that reminded me of the smell of leather work gloves, a high-school locker room at homecoming, the inside of an ancient canvas tent.”

—Michael Chabon, "Wonder Boys"
October 18, 2017