Thomas Curwen is a writer for the Los Angeles Times. His 2007 story “Attacked by a Grizzly” was a finalist for a 2008 Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing.
Come the close of any calendar year, and look-back pieces are as common as failed New Year resolutions. At the close of a decade — even more. So when one rises out of the scrum and provides both something … Read more
EDITOR’S NOTE: Storyboard recently revisited the long-standing debate over the ‘nut graf’ — variably called the summary nut, the billboard, the transition, the significance graf, the so-what passage, the foreshadow. Veteran writer and story coach Chip Scanlan weighed … Read more
I read poetry. Chalk it up to an English degree, perhaps too much Milton or Wordsworth as an undergrad, or a line or two that I once might have penned one dark and stormy night. But as a journalist, I … Read more
It was summer; it was winter. The village disappeared behind skeins of fog. Fishermen came and went in boats named Reverence, Granite Prince, Souwester. Whenever I find my writing drifting into the simple staccato of basic exposition, whenever I question … Read more
