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.

“I go to sleep every night knowing I have the blood of so many on my hands and no amount of soap could ever wash these stains away.”

Why is it great? Chivers just won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing for his magazine profile of Sam Siatta, a Marine suffering from PTSD. How did he make a…

“But then the not-knowing returns, and it keeps him awake at night.”

Why is it great? For the second week in a row, our One Great Sentence comes from a gifted journalist who has just left us. Last week, the writer was…

“She is the mother of two fatherless children and she was walking into the history of this country because she was showing everybody who felt old and helpless and without hope that she had this terrible strength that everybody needed so badly.”

Like a lot of people, last week I reread the story that made Jimmy Breslin famous. It has his greatest hallmark: writing about the little guy, in this case Clifton Pollard, who…
The Power of Narrative conference: how the tools of poetry can help journalists

The Power of Narrative conference: how the tools of poetry can help journalists

The poet Verandah Porche, who sparked a firestorm at last year's event with her question to Gay Talese about women writers, made a softer splash this year: "Sort what haunts…

“Henry Ford believed the soul of a person is located in the last breath and so captured the last breath of his best friend Thomas Edison in a test tube and kept it evermore.”

Why is it great? This line, from the poet Elizabeth Alexander’s beautiful memoir about the death of her husband, knocked me out on a couple levels. First, I had no…

“This is a love story, and I apologize; it was inadvertent. But I want it clearly understood from the start that I don’t expect it to turn out well.”

Why is it great? Have you ever read a book and found it hard to get over a terrible first line? You want to move on, and the other 100,000…
5(ish) Questions: Diarmid Mogg and the crazy-compelling "Small Town Noir"

5(ish) Questions: Diarmid Mogg and the crazy-compelling “Small Town Noir”

The Scotsman's website is a rabbit hole of midcentury mug shots and the stories of the everyday people of a Pennsylvania town at probably the worst moment in their lives

“Hazel Morse was a large, fair woman of the type that incites some men when they use the word ‘blonde’ to click their tongues and wag their heads roguishly.”

Why is it great? With this opening line to her famous short story, Parker does so many things: She gives us an image of Hazel that’s Kodachrome clear: I can…
Notable Narrative: Bernt Jakob Oksnes and "The Baby in the Plastic Bag"

Notable Narrative: Bernt Jakob Oksnes and “The Baby in the Plastic Bag”

The Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet bucked the short-attention-span trend by committing to a nine-part serial -- and it paid off both in readers and a powerful narrative about an infant left…
Guy Larson and "Merv Curls Lead" — it's kind of like "The Office" on ice

Guy Larson and “Merv Curls Lead” — it’s kind of like “The Office” on ice

In his 1999 piece on a would-be impresario of the quirky sport of curling, the Canadian writer creates a David Brent-like character: at times an insufferable blusterer, at others an…