The 2022 National Book Awards were announced this week. I expect I am not alone in adding the winners in fiction and nonfiction to my wish list and handing it, not very discreetly, to my gift-giver-in-residence. Read more
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is one of two essays about the new book “A Place Called Writer L,” a collection of listserv discussions from the 1990s and 2000s. Tomorrow, co-editor Stuart Warner writes of the origins and ending … Read more
First there was Nathalie, an English language learner who whispered that she’d never done well in English, never liked it, but this course was different. And her writing was getting better. Then there was Nseandra, who avoided the news … Read more
A stray remark during a visit with her grandmother sent newspaper reporter Casey Parks, then a college journalism student, on a years-long quest to unearth the story of a trans man in Louisiana. As the project evolved — from … Read more
They are sweet, tart, succulent and tangy. Summer on the tongue. The mighty blackberry: as big as your thumb; a deep, inky sheen with purple highlights; a nuanced flavor with earthy undertones and hints of Pinot Noir that lends … Read more
It was the mid-1990s. I was sitting across a white damask table-clothed table at a midtown Manhattan steak house watching my editor, Bob Loomis, alternately cut into a ribeye and sip a dry Martini. This was … Read more
If not for the astrophysicist and author Carl Sagan, University of Washington atmospheric scientist Cliff Mass might be writing and teaching about Nor’easters, Mount Washington in New Hampshire and Boston’s Back Bay instead of atmospheric rivers, Mount Rainier … Read more
For well over a decade, my memoir was a perennial backburner project. I would vow to carve out time to write each week, but work or life always took precedence. I kept a blog where I posted personal essays, … Read more
The subjects that draw author, lecturer and essayist Andrew Solomon are never easy or light: Racial bias, gender and sexual identity, the changing definitions of family and, perhaps most notably, mental health. His 2012 book … Read more
Editor’s note: This is one of five posts from the 2022 Power of Narrative conference at Boston University. For other takeaways, see Ellen Barry on first-person narratives and Lizzie Johnson on deadline narratives. Read more
