5 Questions

Singular moments, timeless questions

Two-time Pulitzer winner Gene Weingarten finds the beating heart at the center of his new book about one ordinary, extraordinary day

By Chip Scanlan • October 22, 2019

From five minutes to finished

A writer and physician stumbles into a solution for writing fast and relaxed. Sleep is required.

By Jacqui Banaszynski • October 18, 2019

5 Questions

Ditching “monkey mind” to find joy while writing

Shop Class: An author and meditation guide teaches writers how to get through the "bardo," or stuck places, with mindfulness practice

By Hope McLeod • October 16, 2019

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Katia Savchuk

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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 multi-media 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

Notable Narratives

Can you say … Thanks, and we miss you?

By Matt Tullis

July 13, 2018

On Mister Rogers, Tom Junod and the art of reverence

Notable Narratives

Writing through a whiteout: David Grann and “The White Darkness”

By Steve Oney

March 13, 2018

In his New Yorker piece on an explorer following Shackleton's footsteps in Antarctica, the reporter struggled through his own writing blizzard

Notable Narratives

Notable Narrative: Jack Hitt and the birth of live-action TV news in “What Goes Up”

By Katia Savchuk

December 12, 2017

For Epic magazine, he writes about a daredevil helicopter pilot for a Phoenix station who "kept breaking the fourth wall of journalism by beating the cops"

Notable Narratives

Notable Narrative: The Cincinnati Enquirer’s stunning “Seven Days of Heroin”

By Katia Savchuk

September 25, 2017

A writer and editor talk about wrangling 60 staffers and a deluge of copy -- and creating a riveting portrait of the human face of the opioid epidemic

Notable Narratives

Notable Narrative: The Marshall Project’s Maurice Chammah and “The Accusation”

By Katia Savchuk

September 12, 2017

The reporter talks about his piece, published jointly with Esquire, on a recanted allegation of child sex abuse that had sent a father to prison