One Great Moment “That’s what writing is, after all the nonsense…” Some book purists may cringe at this, but one test of a great book, to me, is how many pages are dogeared by the time I finish. Those are the… November 4, 2021 Jacqui Banaszynski “His name was Zaki Anwari …” Writers usually stuff facts in dispatches from the front or the cop shop or the accident scene. All those W’s and H’s, jammed together.Generally, the formula works. But individual facts,… August 25, 2021 Tom Warhover “…no one feels the entry wound …” “The White Lotus” scorches like burning sand on bare feet. A satire about wealthy white tourists in Hawaii and a mysterious death that springs from their visit, the HBO series… August 4, 2021 Trevor Pyle “… and the cold came biting …” Some years ago, I spent three weeks at a mountain-climbing base camp in the interior of Antarctica. The reporting trip was supposed to be a two-day in-and-out, but a dispute… July 15, 2021 Jacqui Banaszynski “I spent my career writing hard news. That’s me.” If you’re not a fan of “A River Runs Through It,” it can only be because you haven’t read it yet. Norman Maclean’s 1976 novella of family dynamics plays out… June 8, 2021 Jacqui Banaszynski “…silence so dense it became its own sound.” If you have read the novels of Dennis Lehane (among them “Gone, Baby, Gone,” “Mystic River” and “Shutter Island,” all made into movies), you know that place is a powerful… May 25, 2021 Don Nelson “… a fleeting fit of frustration” over the F word Consider the curse of curse words. Some publications steer clear of them altogether. Some embrace them in whole, in part, or in different forms and different fonts. Some have found… April 27, 2021 Trevor Pyle “… a space coffin turned shooting star.” I‘m not sure why a New Yorker story from November 2017 showed up in my social media feed in recent days, but I’m glad it did.I’m from the generation that… March 16, 2021 Jacqui Banaszynski “She was delicate the way a ribbon of steel holds up its part of a bridge.” I love that feeling when a passage promises you that a story is worth sticking with. I had this experience recently when reading Wesley Morris’ profile of the late Cicely… February 18, 2021 Mallary Tenore “… equal was the one thing all men were not.” Clichés are a bane of original writing. Unless you turn a worn and tired cliché on its ear (I sure hope you notice what I did just there) and make… February 10, 2021 Jacqui Banaszynski Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … 16 Next
