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.

"The charm and the pain and the humanity" -- what great storytelling is all about

“The charm and the pain and the humanity” — what great storytelling is all about

A weekly roundup of some favorite things, for your reading and listening pleasure
June 9, 2017

“It’s a little facile, maybe, and certainly hard to implement, but I’d say, as a goal in life, you could do worse than: Try to be kinder.”

—George Saunders, commencement speech at Syracuse University, 2013
June 7, 2017

“He had gone into another room, to where the buffet was, after he had watched the 12 rounds when he was the heavyweight champeen of the world, back in that last indelible summer when America dared yet dream that it could run and hide from the world, when the handsomest boy loved the prettiest girl, when streetcars still clanged and fistfights were fun, and the smoke hung low when Maggie went off to Paradise.”

—Frank Deford, "The Boxer and The Blonde," Sports Illustrated, June 17, 1985
May 31, 2017

“Did he kill? If he did kill, I would swear that it is with this meticulous, somewhat maniacal, admirably lucid care with which he classifies his notes, drafts his papers. Did he kill? Then it is while whistling a little tune, and wearing an apron for fear of stains.”

—Colette, "Voici Landru!" Le Matin, November 8, 1921
May 24, 2017

“This will happen so fast that one night he will be in the backyard, believing it a perfect place, and by the next night he will have changed and the yard as he imagined it will be gone, and this era of his life will be behind him forever.”

—Susan Orlean, “The American Man, Age 10,” Esquire, December 1992
May 17, 2017
Literary journalism gets some love, from "Hiroshima" to Shane Bauer's prison exposé

Literary journalism gets some love, from “Hiroshima” to Shane Bauer’s prison exposé

A weekly roundup of some favorite things, for your reading and listening pleasure
May 12, 2017

“There’s no room for hate in ice cream,” Dennis liked to remind himself.

—David Wolman and Julian Smith, “The Cold War,” Epic magazine, 2015.
May 10, 2017
5(ish) Questions: Josh O'Kane and "The Ballad of Fogarty's Cove"

5(ish) Questions: Josh O’Kane and “The Ballad of Fogarty’s Cove”

The Globe and Mail reporter talks about his Nova Scotia story exploring the love of a place, and the sorrow over leaving when it cannot sustain you
May 9, 2017

“She was beautiful but when she tasted the water from the glass on her lectern she smiled sadly as if it were bitter for, in spite of her civil zeal, she had a taste for the melancholy – for the smell of orange rinds and wood smoke – that was extraordinary.”

—John Cheever, "The Wapshot Chronicle," 1957
May 4, 2017

“He sat in an old chair near a particle board pinned with the yellowed obituaries of steelworker friends who died too early, including Robert Plater. 60. Cancer. A paper target practice figure hung next to the obituaries. Its heart had been blown out.”

—Jeffrey Fleishman, "Here's why Bruce Springsteen's blue-collar heroes have made Donald Trump their rock star," Los Angeles Times, October 27, 1016.
April 26, 2017