Story Annotations

Below is an annotated version of my syllabus for the class “Literary Journalism in America.” I’ve taught this class eight times: five as part of the SAGES program at Case…

When Jeanne Marie Laskas set out to write about guns for GQ magazine in 2012, she knew it would be difficult but she didn’t expect it would become the story…

If you’re read the most recent Storyboard feature for the Nieman Reports magazine — and, if you haven’t, here it is — you may know that narrative is increasingly taking to…

Michael J. Mooney staked his claim in the world of narrative journalism with two stories that ran just weeks apart in the summer of 2012. In June, Mooney, a staff…

Justin Heckert has taken to his adopted home of Indianapolis, where his wife, Amanda, is the editor of Indianapolis Monthly. Heckert, who started making a name for himself as a magazine…

I’ve been thinking about Mike Sager’s story, “The Devil and John Holmes,” for a long time. I first read his chronicle of the famous porn star and the Wonderland murders…

Annotation Tuesday ventures into a new medium today with our first annotation of a radio story. It’s a natural fit. The human voice is, of course, the original storytelling instrument.…

Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah and I met recently in her Brooklyn apartment to talk about “If He Hollers Let Him Go.” Her story, which is and isn’t about comedian Dave Chappelle, ran in…

[Editor’s note: John Jeremiah Sullivan‘s “Upon This Rock” is by now a modern classic of literary journalism: writer rents an RV, experiences a Christian rock festival (and certain revelations) with a…

Before Rebecca Skloot published the bestselling The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, she wrote magazines stories about science and about animals. You may remember her New York Times magazine piece…