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.

“Summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screened porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the tree house; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape.”

—Harper Lee, "To Kill a Mockingbird."
July 26, 2017
On identity: men who created it, women who lost it, a writer who escaped it

On identity: men who created it, women who lost it, a writer who escaped it

A weekly roundup of some favorite things, for your reading and listening pleasure
July 21, 2017

“And one day he made an error, and then struck out, and it sounded like all of Fenway was booing, and he ran to the bench with his head down, the red rising in his face, the shame in his belly, and the rage. Ted thought: These are the ones who cheered, the fans I waved my cap to? Well, never again.”

—Richard Ben Cramer, "What Do You Think of Ted Williams Now?" Esquire, June 1986.
July 19, 2017
5(ish) Questions: Steve Oney and "A Man's World" (both the song and his new book)

5(ish) Questions: Steve Oney and “A Man’s World” (both the song and his new book)

The writer talks about how ideas about masculinity have changed over his 40-year career, and how he eerily predicted the rise of Breitbart America
July 18, 2017

“Well I chased him through them county roads / Till a sign said Canadian border five miles from here / I pulled over to the side of the highway and watched his taillights disappear.”

—Bruce Springsteen, “Highway Patrolman," from the (brilliant) 1982 album "Nebraska."
July 12, 2017
Here's some of the best literary journalism about the scourge that is gun violence

Here’s some of the best literary journalism about the scourge that is gun violence

A weekly roundup of some favorite things, for your reading and listening pleasure
June 30, 2017

“The fact was it felt good to be angry, to yell and curse, because if she wasn’t angry then she was mostly afraid: of nightmares, of being alone, of the shadows in the church parking lot across the street, of cars backfiring, of the sound of knocking coming now at the door.”

—Eli Saslow, "A survivor’s life," The Washington Post, December 5, 2015.
June 28, 2017

“We cross our bridges as we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and the presumption that once our eyes watered.”

—Tom Stoppard, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead"
June 21, 2017
Now's a good time to read some highlights of the global effort to honor Javier Valdez

Now’s a good time to read some highlights of the global effort to honor Javier Valdez

Today, journalists around the world came together to honor slain Mexican journalist Javier Valdez Cárdenas on the one-month anniversary of his assassination. The global campaign, known as “Our voice is…
June 15, 2017

“The great mistake is to live in Mexico and to be a journalist.”

—Javier Valdez Cárdenas, from his 2016 book, "Narcoperiodismo"
June 14, 2017