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.”

Why is it great? I’ve never read Bierce’s satirical dictionary, but after coming across this sentence, it’s on the list.  With just a few words, he conjures up the dreariness…
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.”

Why is it great? Take a look at the publication date: 1792. That’s more than two centuries ago, and two things are remarkable about this fact. 1) That Wollstonecraft, the…
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.”

Why is it great? For Halloween, I decided to use this wonderfully spooky line from Mark Twain (who in his writing and his speaking was a true master of the…
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 … “

“Along with these tots and second-honeymooners, there were Harvard freshmen, giving off that peculiar nervous glow created when a quantity of insouciance is saturated with insecurity; thick-necked Army officers with…
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.”

Why is it great? Chabon has tapped into that greatest of sensory effects: the ability of smells to take you back to a place, a moment, a memory. The last…
October 18, 2017