Notable Narratives

The enduring power of John Hersey’s “Hiroshima”: the first “nonfiction novel”

On the 75th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb, Hersey's taut, unflinching story remains a masterpiece of narrative reporting

By Jacqui Banaszynski • August 6, 2020

John Hersey as a correspondent for TIME magazine in World War II, photographed in 1944 in an unknown location. He went on to write

How the “Beyonce of earthquakes” uses storytelling to explain science

Seismologist Lucy Jones mixes an "alchemy" of hard data and compelling imagery to relay messages about risk and response

By Alla Katsnelson • August 4, 2020

Personal Essays

When the bounds of conventional journalism are too tight

In "The Hero of Goodall Park," Tom Junod unraveled a 50-year-old secret — and helped fashion a new ending

By Brendan Meyer • July 31, 2020

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Notable Narratives

The enduring power of John Hersey’s “Hiroshima”: the first “nonfiction novel”

By Jacqui Banaszynski

August 6, 2020

On the 75th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb, Hersey's taut, unflinching story remains a masterpiece of narrative reporting

Notable Narratives

How F. Scott Fitzgerald guided the hand and aspirations of a newspaper journalist

By Lisa Grace Lednicer

June 4, 2020

An editor and writer revisits the lessons she found, as a young reporter, embedded in Fitzgerald's short stories

Notable Narratives

The news joins the rituals of mourning

By Roy Peter Clark

May 28, 2020

A haunting front page and essay in the New York Times is more than a chronicle of the dead in the era of coronavirus

Notable Narratives

Four hundred years of harsh history delivered in 8,000 unflinching words

By Lisa Grace Lednicer

January 17, 2020

Nikole Hannah-Jones anchors "The 1619 Project" in the New York Times with a "reported essay" that weaves historical events and personal experience

Notable Narratives

A narrative “troika:” direct testimony, news analysis and biographical journalism

By Ron Judd

November 5, 2019

How the eye-witness testimony of a public servant advanced and enhanced coverage of the Trump Ukraine story in ways journalism alone couldn't

Notable Narratives

Will this date ever fade?

By Jacqui Banaszynski

September 11, 2019

Remembering the day, and the stories we wish never had to be written

Notable Narratives

Not just a guilty pleasure: “Game of Thrones” holds essential writing lessons

By Roy Peter Clark

June 5, 2019

Esteemed writing teacher Roy Peter Clark shares the 12 things he learned (or re-learned) about storytelling from the epic HBO series

Notable Narratives

About a bear: The story behind the story of “The Loneliest Polar Bear”

By Julia Shipley

April 19, 2019

How The Oregonian tracked the uncertain fate of an abandoned bear cub and created a multimedia phenomenon that informed other projects

Notable Narratives

Raw first stories from the Appalachian Trail

By Greg Bowers

February 28, 2019

Earl V. Shaffer's original journals reveal a treasure trove that inspired a book, and generations of hikers — and writers — to come

Notable Narratives

A prescient voice speaks for the Earth

By Erik Ness

February 5, 2019

Seventy years after "A Sand County Almanac," Aldo Leopold's message grows in relevance

Notable Narratives

Finding a narrative in “our most urgent national conversation”: the one about guns

By Julia Shipley

October 23, 2018

How three reporters, a national news chain and 21 strangers who met to talk became a 5,000-word tale with character, intimacy, structure and drama

Notable Narratives

A conversation with Nathaniel Rich on “Losing Earth,” human inertia and storytelling as “a moral act”

By Rebecca Boyle

September 21, 2018

In the longest single piece ever published by The New York Times Magazine, the author takes on a crucible decade in the battle against climate change