Nell Lake

What stands out among all the lovely elements in this series is Tizon’s use of the first and second persons. Come join me on a journey, he says. And if…

As in all of Siegel’s stories on this site, all of which cover in some sense an “endangered child,” he portrays emotional content—in this case a young boy’s death, his…

Siegel builds this piece on effective, masterful movement from story-telling through explanatory digressions and back to story. The digressions advance not just our understanding of how this girl could come…

What consistently sets Siegel’s writing apart from many other newspaper narratives is his ability and willingness to construct an authoritative, muscular “argument.” In this case, he shows how a middle-class…

The title of this piece triggered our mawkishness radar: It signals tragedy; we wondered how such tragedy would be handled. Reading, we thought the piece teeters on the edge of…

This is a thorough and nuanced examination of the war’s impact on American lives. The story of the main character, Jeannette Mulligan, the wife of a soldier, provides an overarching…

Viser writes about a young man, Zack Weinstein, who has “started an unusual process: healing by blog.” Weinstein writes about his experiences on his blog following a spinal injury that…

You might say radio has an inherent advantage when it comes to scene-setting. Put  ambient sound in the background, and you’ve placed a listener in a particular place at a…

We liked that DeGregory emphasized the human component in this story about the loss of her dog: her children and their reactions, her husband’s and her own reactions as well.…

Rakan is a 12-year-old who, through extraordinary intervention by several powerful men, is flown to an American hospital from Iraq following the death of his parents and his own injury…