5 Questions

What’s in a 50-year-old photo? The lingering gutwrench of the Vietnam War

An iconic photo from the 1968 Tet Offensive is revisited, raising questions about memory, identity, and and how we honor those who served

By Steven A. Smith • May 23, 2019

John Olson's iconic photo of a wounded Marie, taken in mid-February 1968 during the infamous Tet Offensive, inspired books, a Newseum exhibit, news stories, and some controversy over the identify of the young American on the stretcher

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One Great Sentence

“A true war story is never moral.”

Tim O'Brien, from his novel "The Things They Carried"

By Jacqui Banaszynski • May 23, 2019

Story Craft

Roy Peter Clark on the search for the “embedded narrative”

How to find a compelling storyline in arts coverage — or any beat topic

By Roy Peter Clark • May 21, 2019

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Katia Savchuk

Julia Shipley

Tom Warhover

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Investigative Reporting Short Narratives Tom Junod Poverty Narrative Journalism
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5 Questions

What’s in a 50-year-old photo? The lingering gutwrench of the Vietnam War

By Steven A. Smith
May 23, 2019

An iconic photo from the 1968 Tet Offensive is revisited, raising questions about memory, identity, and and how we honor those who served

5 Questions

Grounding apocalyptic issues in reality without losing hope

By Rebecca Boyle
March 21, 2019

Q&A with Washington Post writer Dan Zak about his daring and emotional query about climate change, and finding some calm in the controversy

5 Questions

Building a museum with jars of dirt, and building stories from the ground up

By Kim Cross
February 26, 2019

A writer profiles Alabama's new memorial to slavery through the eyes of slavery's descendants — connecting then and now, "us and them"

5 Questions

From a Kickstarter about avocados to conviction as an American spy

By Jan Gardner
January 22, 2019

How Washington Post correspondent Jason Rezaian turned 544 days in an Iranian prison into a story about love, journalism and a broken homeland

5 Questions

A writer Instagrams his way back to love … or something close to it

By Elie Gardner
January 3, 2019

Conversation with Tyrone Beason: How a Seattle Times reporter chronicled his relationship with the streets, and learned to tell a story with his phone

5 Questions

A “final” phone call from the wildfires inspires an unusual, intimate story written under the fire of deadline

By Julia Shipley
December 19, 2018

A conversation with Corina Knoll of The Los Angeles Times: She broke with convention and just wrote it "how I felt it should be told"

5 Questions

A conversation with Tommy Tomlinson: Getting naked in print and public

By Chip Scanlan
October 9, 2018

A writer who tells intimate stories of others turns his notebook on himself in a searing memoir that undresses his own and America's obesity

5 Questions

Q&A: A conversation with Alexandra Petri on conjugating gender and politics

By Anna Claire Vollers
September 26, 2018

What's in a verb? That depends on whether he said or she said

5 Questions

Parachute reporting in a foreign land: Getting it fast and getting it right

By Shannon Wianecki
August 23, 2018

To cover the Kilauea volcano, Simon Romero had to push past tourist brochures, myths and cliches to discover a more authentic Hawai'i

5 Questions

Q&A: How a letter, honesty and patience won the trust of a shamed school cop

By Pat Walters
August 16, 2018

Washington Post narrative writer Eli Saslow answers an essential question: "How'd he get that guy to talk to him?"

5 Questions

Q&A: Greg Bishop on a quarterback, a suicide and a search for answers

By Elliott Almond
July 31, 2018

The Sports Illustrated senior writer uses intimate reporting and intricate outlining to weave personal tragedy with societal controversy

5 Questions

Take Two: Avi Selk on spiders, aggregation and writing fast

By Rebecca Boyle
July 18, 2018

EDITOR’S NOTE: Yesterday, we featured contributor Rebecca Boyle’s interview with Washington Post general assignment reporter Avi Selk about his intriguing, elegiac story of the world’s longest living spider. Today, we broaden that interview as Boyle delves into Selk’s process for writing fast – very fast –… Read More

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