By Chip Scanlan The best storytellers are driven by an insatiable need to know. Give them a mystery and they will dedicate themselves to trying to solve it. That relentless inquisitiveness propelled John Branch of The … Read more
By Tom Warhover There’s a war on words and images out there. Book banning in schools is trending these days, supercharged with the twin engines of social media and political extremism. Banning has reached historic highs. Book challenges are … Read more
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is one of two posts featuring Kim Cross on the successful pitch-and-proposal process that led to her new book, ‘In Light of All Darkness.’ In this post, Cross annotates the proposal that landed her … Read more
By AniaHull Unless he’s at the keyboard, writing or editing his work, this is what Luke Mogelson takes with him to work: an old desert-camouflage bullet-proof vest, a Kevlar helmet, a GoPro clipped to the front of his vest, … Read more
By Jacqui Banaszynski Imagine the directive in the image above is not an end game, but a prompt. What if you added something more descriptive? Read more broadly. Read more thoughtfully. Read more openly. Or, my mantra: Read more … Read more
By Michael Ollove I couldn’t bring myself to speak to Stephen King. That Stephen King. The Titan of Terror. The Behemoth of the Bestseller List. Maine’s Master of the Macabre. I had him in my sights, and I let … Read more
By Carly Stern Every reporter has one of those story ideas simmering on the back burner that they simply can’t let drop. For Raquel Rutledge, it started with a house fire. The fire, which damaged a two-story rental house … Read more
By Chip Scanlan Journalism, by its very nature, focuses on the now — the events and people making the news today. But powerful stories can be found by mining the past to add fresh material and context to what … Read more
EDITOR’S NOTE: In coming weeks, narrative journalist and teacher Lauren Kessler will identify and explore the key elements of nonfiction storytelling, including scene, character and endings. By Lauren Kessler There was something of a Camelot — … Read more
By Ania Hull Jon Mooallem is a writer-at-large with The New York Times Magazine, and has published articles and feature stories with, among others, The New Yorker, Harper’s, The Atlantic, Slate, and Mother Jones. He’s the author of two … Read more