In July 2011, Michael Kruse of the St. Petersburg Times (now the Tampa Bay Times) wrote a haunting story about the “disappearance” and death of a woman named Kathryn Norris. He did it partly by dumpster-diving for personal details … Read more
When the Winter 2005 issue of The Oxford American arrived, I flipped through the pages, glimpsed the reptilian close-ups accompanying Wendy Brenner’s profile of Dean Ripa, creator and caretaker of the Cape Fear Serpentarium, and shoved the magazine out of … Read more
The story I want to tell you about, “In the Monster’s Maw,” was published in 1997, and that’s important. Because in 1997, when Burkhard Bilger went out to Oklahoma for The Atlantic, to write about noodling for catfish, … Read more
Where is Edna Buchanan when we need her? Admittedly, the lede on this recent Associated Press story wasn’t half bad: MIAMI — A witness says a naked man chewing on the face of another naked man on a downtown highway ramp kept … Read more
Let’s start with the headline. Sometimes, when I am trying to headline a piece and my heds are getting more and more punny and convoluted, I gather myself and remember this New York magazine story, a story I often … Read more
My love affair with narrative nonfiction was in its early stages when I first read Robert Kurson’s “Into the Light,” in the June 2005 edition of Esquire. I was mostly clueless about the art of plotting as a … Read more
Years ago, the wonderful Walt Harrington came to our newsroom and fired us up. We were at the start of a storytelling revival, trying to find our way back to craft, and Walt’s book “Intimate Journalism” had just … Read more
Over the years Roy Blount Jr. has written a number of superb magazine articles, one of my favorites being “Knock ’im Out, Jay-ree!” a profile of the great Southern raconteur Jerry (pronounced Jay-ree) Clower. The piece, which appeared … Read more
Just shoot me now. That might be a normal journalist’s reaction to news that the subject of a mega-profile for a magazine cover story has declined to be interviewed for the piece. But in the mid-1960s Gay Talese was anything … Read more