At first glance, there are few frills or fireworks in “Tatiana’s Luck,” Hannah Dreier ‘s profile of an immigrant living in a crowded New Jersey house stalked by COVID-19. In the … Read more
When looking for advice, writers shouldn’t be picky; sometimes even a fictional cannibal will serve. When NBC aired a series about Hannibal Lecter, the psychiatrist who moonlights as a serial killer — or maybe it’s the other way around … Read more
With a cell phone, an eye for evocative detail and 50 pages of notes, Brittny Mejia of the Los Angeles Times turned a day at a grocery store into a portrait of a community challenged and changed by … Read more
Surprising stories spring from any number of places. Investigative or narrative or explanatory stories often start with curiosity sparked by a local news story or feature. That’s what happened when an editor at Slate read a story in a … Read more
Julia Rosen has probed the myths of America’s deepest lake, looked down on Prince William Sound from a floatplane and joined a quest to scour the Bronx … Read more
When Dashka Slater looked at California’s parole system, she saw more than a sprawling bureaucracy; she saw a place where people struggled toward redemption. When she followed those seeking parole, the journalist and author found more than crimes and … Read more
Kobe Bryant had enough championship rings for a fist, a mural bearing his image on Melrose Avenue and a history that echoes loudly in the #MeToo era. The former Lakers star’s shocking death with eight others in a helicopter … Read more
Lizzie Presser was looking for the intersection of two wide-ranging and little-known facets of American life: the broad power of contempt laws, and the criminalization of medical debt. The ProPublica reporter found it in Coffeyville, Kansas, and came back … Read more
Lizzy Goodman’s “Meet Me in the Bathroom” is such a raucous oral history of New York’s indie rock scene that readers’ ears are in danger of ringing while reading. It’s vivid and grimy enough to make you feel … Read more
You can almost smell the cedar-hewn totem poles and see them rise from the soil, so evocative is “We Didn’t Stand A Chance,” Joshua Hunt’s personal essay about opioid abuse among Native Alaskans. Opioid abuse … Read more
