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.

Love and laughter and Dorothy Parker: sounds like the name of a cool movie, no?

Love and laughter and Dorothy Parker: sounds like the name of a cool movie, no?

Sometimes, when the world is too much with us, we just need a love story or a laugh. This week, Storyboard obliged with lots of both. We talked to the…
August 25, 2017

“Take me or leave me; or, as is the usual order of things, both.”

Why is it great? Yesterday was Dorothy Parker’s birthday. (She would have been 124, reminding me of her classic line, “Time may be a great healer, but it’s a lousy…
August 23, 2017
Neo-Nazis, childhood abuse and even a solemn E.B. White -- here's to better weeks

Neo-Nazis, childhood abuse and even a solemn E.B. White — here’s to better weeks

This has been an unsettling week. Who will forget the look on that one Charlottesville marcher’s face, a terrible echo of the hate seen on other faces as Hitler rose…
August 18, 2017

“Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year – the days when summer is changing into autumn – the crickets spread the rumor of sadness and change.”

Why is it great? Here in E.B. White’s Maine, August is bittersweet, bringing whispers of summer’s end even at the height of its ripeness. Apples, the fruit of fall, begin…
August 16, 2017
The journalistic power of empathy: making connections that elevate the writing

The journalistic power of empathy: making connections that elevate the writing

Empathy is one of the greatest gifts a journalist can have. If you come by it naturally, you can actually feel what your subject is feeling, and that can be a…
August 11, 2017
5(ish) Questions: Maud Newton and her science-meets-personal-essay "I, Rodent"

5(ish) Questions: Maud Newton and her science-meets-personal-essay “I, Rodent”

A few days ago, I had the disturbing experience of stepping barefoot on the bloody, decapitated body of a mouse. My first reaction was of course a back-wheeling step away…
August 10, 2017

“In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.”

—F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Great Gatsby."
August 9, 2017
"Lolita," lobsters and David Foster Wallace: Now that's what we call a party

“Lolita,” lobsters and David Foster Wallace: Now that’s what we call a party

The annual Maine Lobster Festival is underway, so it seemed like a good time to go big on lobsters. Of course, festival organizers might not have been huge fans of David…
August 4, 2017

“Imagine me; I shall not exist if you do not imagine me; try to discern the doe in me, trembling in the forest of my own iniquity; let’s even smile a little.”

Why is it great? Nabokov is masterful here, not just stylistically but emotionally. He interrupts Humbert Humbert’s grotesque pursuit of Lolita by having him address the reader directly with an…
August 2, 2017
Katherine Boo, Sarah Lyall and Harper Lee: It's grrl power week on Storyboard

Katherine Boo, Sarah Lyall and Harper Lee: It’s grrl power week on Storyboard

A weekly roundup of some favorite things, for your reading and listening pleasure
July 28, 2017