Story Craft

An editor’s sensitive guide to interviewing victims of trauma

Narrative editor Jan Winburn created a class at the University of Montana focused on "The Worst Day Ever: Writing about Trauma"

By Jan Winburn • January 20, 2022

Students from Jan Winburn's trauma reporting class at the University of Montana. Winburn is second from the left in the first row, behind her dog, Boomer.

An Atlantic writer turned a fatal blow into a sensitive study of boxing, guilt and grit

Jacob Stern knew nothing about boxing when he set out to ask a painful question: How can a boxer who killed an opponent return to the ring?

By Trevor Pyle • January 18, 2022

Notable Narratives

The making of Joan Didion: From fuzzy facts to peerless prose

A re-read of Didion's work shows the evolution of excellence that came through years of hard work and self scrutiny

By Dale Keiger • January 14, 2022

Featured Contributors

Chip Scanlan

Julia Shipley

Roy Peter Clark

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Strictly Q&A

How an “immersionist” held up the story of one homeless child as “a mirror to America”

By Bonnie Miller Rubin

December 10, 2021

Pulitzer-winner Andrea Elliott of The New York Times followed a homeless child named Dasani for eight years, from newspaper project to book

Strictly Q&A

Reporting the untold tales of executioners’ songs

By Trevor Pyle

December 3, 2021

South Carolina reporter Chiara Eisner used public records and sensitive sourcing to tell stories of people who execute condemned prisoners

Strictly Q&A

How a top explanatory reporter does emotional interviews: With empathy

By Kim Cross

September 29, 2021

Pulitzer Prize winner Ed Yong of The Atlantic takes the same open approach with COVID scientists and frontline nurses

Strictly Q&A

Tracking shards of grief for 20 years, and daring to love your story subjects

By Trevor Pyle

September 10, 2021

Jennifer Senior of The Atlantic goes on a quest to find what a friend lost to 9/11 left behind, and delivers a meditation on love and grief

Strictly Q&A

How the loss of one Olympic story led to gold on another

By Trevor Pyle

August 27, 2021

Wall Street Journal sports reporter Ben Cohen found a surprising profile of an unlikely Olympian in previous notes, then used Zoom to bring it to life

Strictly Q&A

Foreign reporting: Peter Hessler on seeing China through a personal lens

By Simina Mistreanu

July 28, 2021

The author, New Yorker writer and China veteran talks about the benefits of ‘longitudinal research’ and the imperative of international reporting

Strictly Q&A

How the voices of five young women from remote, coastal Maine challenge stereotypes

By Monique Brouillette

June 16, 2021

A former educational policy advisor turned questions about raising her daughter outside the city into a surprising portrait of rural America

Strictly Q&A

Empathy as the prime directive in writing about displaced people

By Madeline Bodin

June 11, 2021

Award-winning author Jessica Goudeau says journalists must expand their toolbox to write about the growing issues of displacement

Strictly Q&A

What it takes to cover a foreign country as a woman and during a pandemic

By Cat Woods

March 10, 2021

Indonesia correspondent Anne Barker of the Australian Broadcasting Corp. delivers a mix of breaking news and more personal stories

Strictly Q&A

What narrative master Eli Saslow learned about intimacy interviewing by phone

By Matt Tullis

February 24, 2021

The Washington Post's year-long "Voices from the Pandemic" series took hours of pre-reporting, patient listening and letting go of writerly control

Story Craft

When writing news requires a distance from neutrality to “tell it like it is”

By Roy Peter Clark

January 14, 2021

Writing guru Roy Peter Clark analyzes an "astonishing lead," and unpacks the notions of objectivity and detachment in light of current events

Strictly Q&A

How a top LinkedIn journalist quit with no what’s-next ideas, then woke up to a big one

By Julia Shipley

December 9, 2020

The Pivot: Novice podcaster Isabelle Roughol on the love of journalism that "lets you enter infinite worlds"