Paige Williams writes for The New Yorker and is an associate professor at the Missouri School of Journalism. Winner of the National Magazine Award for feature writing in 2008, and a finalist in 2011 and 2009 (shared) , she has been anthologized in five volumes of the Best American series, including twice in The Best American Magazine Writing. She is the former editor of Nieman Storyboard and has taught narrative nonfiction at Harvard, M.I.T., NYU, Emory, the University of Pittsburgh, and at her alma mater, the University of Mississippi. She was a ’97 Nieman Fellow and holds an MFA in fiction from Columbia University. Her narrative nonfiction book “The Dinosaur Artist” is forthcoming, from Hachette, in Fall 2016.
In Part 2 of our annotation of Amy Ellis Nutt‘s Pulitzer-winning “The Wreck of the Lady Mary,” Nutt, of the Newark Star-Ledger, explains how the investigative track of her five-chapter narrative unfolded. Yesterday, in Part 1, she walked … Read more
This is the third in an occasional series of line-by-lines with narrative writers and their work, adapted from a project called Annotation Tuesday! on Tumblr. Earlier, we featured the Tampa Bay Times‘ Michael Kruse and his story about a woman who … Read more
Our latest Notable Narrative is an Eli Saslow story called “Life of a salesman,” about a swimming-pool salesman struggling in a terrible economy. Yesterday, we listed some of the story’s virtues. Today, we talk … Read more
Eli Saslow’s stories for the Washington Post and ESPN The Magazine show a narrative journalist in control of his craft. The guy is incapable of writing a forgettable story. If you haven’t been reading him, have a look … Read more
We’re coming upon our 65th installment of “Why’s this so good?” – in which notable journalists dissect their favorite pieces of narrative journalism. Our contributors have included Adam Hochschild, Jennifer B. McDonald, Eli Sanders, Megan Garber, Wesley Morris, Ann … Read more
In Vex, Hex, Smash, Smooch, her new book on writing and language, journalist and writing teacher Constance Hale explores the world of verbs. Hale, a Hawaii native who lives in San Francisco, is the author of Sin … Read more
Word nerds, you’ll want to stock up on yellow highlighters for Vex, Hex, Smash, Smooch, Constance Hale’s newest book on writing and language. In her follow-up to Sin and Syntax, Hale, a journalist and writing teacher, autopsies and … Read more
Why hasn’t anybody Hunter S. Thompsonized this election? Or have they, and we missed it? Esquire’s Charlie Pierce approacheth – In the interest of keeping you abreast of news that hasn’t happened yet, I would like to introduce you … Read more
In Part 3 of our recap of Romania’s “Power of Storytelling” conference on narrative journalism, radio producer Starlee Kine talked about story forms and themes; Esquire‘s Mike Sager talked about listening, and about suspending disbelief; and Pulitzer winner Alex Tizon talked about writing … Read more
In Part 2 of our recap of Romania’s “Power of Storytelling” conference on narrative journalism, Pulitzer winner Jacqui Banaszynski wrote a short essay about why she and eight other North American storytellers traveled to Bucharest to talk stories before … Read more
