Notable Narratives

A reporter sets out to see the Cuban countryside on the 50th anniversary of the revolution, tracing the path between the rebels’ landing point in the south and their final…

Some powerful narratives emerge entirely from the storyteller’s unique proximity to history. “From Silver Lake to Suicide: One Family’s Secret History of the Jonestown Massacre” derives its power and structure…

“The Girl in the Window” is the story of Dani, a child so removed from normal human community she has been labeled “feral.” In this St. Petersburg Times piece, Lane…

FiveThirtyEight.com earns the distinction of being the first blog selected as a Notable Narrative. In his posts, former economic analyst and baseball-stats wunderkind Nate Silver explains the presidential race, using…

In “Ramadi Nights,” author Neil Shea offers up nocturnal desert patrols, pre-dawn home raids, and the dislocated daydreams of servicemen he meets while embedded in the Iraqi province of Al…

Our second notable narrative for this month, “The Real Work,” delves into the legacy of magic and magicians, moving from its youngest apprentices to its veterans and the debate over…

Magic requires both deceiver and deceived to make the impossible seem real. In “The Peekaboo Paradox,” author Gene Weingarten sneaks into the private life of a gifted children’s performer to…

Newspapers struggle with representing incendiary topics in a way that explains without exploiting. Last month, The Plain Dealer’s Joanna Connors addressed sexual assault, poverty, and race in a single project.…

An anti-profile, Jeffrey Fleishman’s “Viewing Life from the Roof,” is a series of snapshots from the life of Alia Qotb, who lives on an anonymous rooftop in Cairo. In  language…

In this story of a father who takes care of his autistic adult son, reporter Maureen O’Hagan adroitly sketches the dilemma caused by longer life expectancies for people with developmental disabilities.…