Short Takes

It’s that time of year, where we take a break for a few days from the world of nonfiction storytelling to hit the beach, eat funnel cakes and read really…

In our latest roundup of narrative and narrative-ish pieces, we've pulled together stories reflecting on 9/11, researchers dealing with an unstoppable disease, the end of a family fishing dynasty, and…

How true does a memoir have to be? That question has been the basis of an ongoing debate kicked off by the revelation, five years ago, that much of James…

A man with advanced ALS heads out for a fishing trip with his wife. A reporter goes to Walt Disney World with his children and a reefer-addicted friend.  A Korean-American…

The next Editors’ Roundtable, which will run on Monday, looks at a story on the tornado that hit Rainsville, Ala., earlier this month. Unfortunately, tragedy has struck again, and journalists…

From a groovy explainer to a broken contortionist, here are some visual experiences worth a look.“My Water’s on Fire Tonight (The Fracking Song),” by David Holmes, Andrew Bean, Niel Bekker,…

We’re thrilled to hear this morning that Iran has freed detained journalist (and 2009 Nieman fellow) Dorothy Parvaz. Alan Cowell and J. David Goodman reported in The New York Times…

[UPDATE: Good news! Iran has allowed Dorothy to return to Qatar. For more information, read our post on Dorothy’s release.]At a Nieman Foundation gathering over the weekend in Cambridge, a…

From Leslie Jamison’s account of the extreme, bizarre Barkley Marathon to Christopher Hitchens’ meditation on what it means to lose the thing that has helped define him as a writer,…

Here are a set of recent stories for your reading enjoyment, gathered from Los Angeles to London. They each deal with the collision between one understanding of the world and…