Personal Essays

A freelance writer learns there is no one "right" way to tell a story, any more than there's one "right" way to make a painting

A freelance science journalist took up drumming, dared to jam some jazz — and found a way to do fast-jazz story drafts

"Books are the diary of my life; when I scan a shelf, I see pieces of my past in the spines. ~ retired book editor Laurie Hertzel

Journalist, nonfiction author and teacher Ben Yagoda returns to some of the passages that inspired his career and helped shape his voice

How a bit of word play launched Clark's career as the renowned writing teacher at the Poynter Institute and author of 20 books on writing

A quarter-century after a catastrophic fire, a reporter returned to interview survivors and faced the grief she had carried with her

Novelist and Vietnam veteran Karl Marlantes on the moral dilemma revealed in a story by reporter and Afghanistan veteran Thomas Gibbons-Neff

A freelancer persisted through multiple rejections and 17 edits to land an article in a favorite magazine

University of Montana journalist Jason Begay, of the Navajo Nation, talks to Washington Post journalist Dana Hedgpeth, of the Haliwa-Saponi tribe, about living with and correcting history

EDITOR’S  NOTE: This essay is from the archives. If you celebrate American Thanksgiving, I hope it was grand and that you have some leftover pie.By Dustin RenwickOne Saturday morning several…