Continuing the spring flurry of awards, Columbia University and the Nieman Foundation announced last week that the 2011 Mark Lynton History Prize will be awarded to Isabel Wilkerson for her book “The Warmth of Other Suns: … Read more
I had a chance to sit down last week with Anna Badkhen in Washington, D.C., to talk about her two books out this year, “Peace Meals” and “Waiting for the Taliban” (an e-book), both narrative nonfiction treatments of the effects of war … Read more
Has book publishing found its savior? Well, probably not, but in August, The Washington Post’s Ron Charles made his small-screen debut in the role of a cranky, self-important book reviewer. Charles, who is actually deputy editor of Book World at … Read more
In what might be the only performance of Texas stand-up comedy about narrative writing, Vanity Fair writer Bryan Burrough recently offered practical tips for long-form storytelling to a Mayborn Conference audience. Prior to his magazine career, Burrough spent … Read more
We talked by phone this week with St. Petersburg Times reporter Michael Kruse, the author of our latest Notable Narrative. An unusual profile of a monkey on the loose in the Tampa Bay area, Kruse’s account comes at the … Read more
After years spent thinking he would become a novelist, David Grann turned to nonfiction, realizing that if he found intriguing characters and situations in real life, he “simply had to excavate them and tell them in a compelling way.” He has … Read more
Yesterday, we highlighted a Sports Illustrated story about the lone goal from a U.S.-England World Cup match in 1950 and the tragic disappearance of the man who scored it. Today, we hear from Alexander Wolff, who wrote the article. If writing … Read more
T.J. Stiles, author of Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War, won a National Book Award in November for his second biography, The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt. In an hour-long interview with Star Tribune (Minneapolis, … Read more
[This is Part 3 in our series stealing the best tips from the audio storytelling handbook of the CBC’s Dispatches radio program. Parts 1 and 2 ran earlier this week.] We at Dispatches have seen thousands of first-draft scripts … Read more
The writing is snappy and the voice human in this slice-of-life piece about a couple and their fateful courtship. We liked the efficient movement from event to event, the sparing but effective use of concrete detail, the folksy language. The … Read more
