Kim Cross a full-time freelance writer and author of “What Stands in a Storm,” a New York Times best-selling account of the biggest tornado outbreak on record. She loves meticulously reported literary nonfiction and discovering narrative craft in unexpected places.
In November 2017, Los Angeles Times staff writer Thomas Curwen noticed an email subject line that intrigued him: UCLA linguist seeking to awaken the sleeping language of the Tongva – LA’s indigenous people. The email — a story pitch … Read more
One day last October, Cara Solomon sat alone in an empty field in Alabama, the unmarked site of a lynching. She wasn’t carrying a reporter’s notebook or thinking yet about how she might write about this place. She was … Read more
Every writer procrastinates. Even John McPhee, one of the most prolific writers of our time. “I’ll go hours before I’m able to write a word,” he has said. “I’ll make tea. I mean, I used … Read more
In a full-circle illustration of the way life sometimes imitates art, screenwriting led Sarah Berns to smokejumping. Then smokejumping led to a cinematic memoir, written with a director’s eye and the architecture of a screenplay. “When I went to … Read more
One honey-glazed autumn afternoon, I watched a tangle of fifth-graders playing Capture the Flag in a park in Boise, Idaho. Their favorite soundtrack blared in the background: Alexander Hamilton. My name is Alexander Hamilton. And there’s a million things … Read more
