In the winter of 2012, a pair of lovers set dozens of fires over a span of 20 weeks in remote Accomack County, Virginia—once the richest rural county in America, and now one of the poorest. As one or two … Read more
In addition to the music of Blythe’s lush language, I love how he captures this brash paradox–that a chorus can make us feel so lonely. Furthermore I love how, like a quintessential writer, he stations himself on an edge between … Read more
The crime was brutal – two guards shot to death with their own .40-caliber Glocks inside a Georgia Department of Corrections bus packed with prisoners. The setting was primal – a lonely stretch of state highway in rural Putnam County … Read more
Sometimes, when the world is too much with us, we just need a love story or a laugh. This week, Storyboard obliged with lots of both. We talked to the writer of a viral Modern Love column in The New … Read more
She has a Groucho Marx tattoo on her left wrist, and a biblically tinged Sufjan Stevens lyric inked on her right arm. So maybe it makes sense that radio producer Lily Percy has been exploring how people use humor to … Read more
Why is it great? Yesterday was Dorothy Parker’s birthday. (She would have been 124, reminding me of her classic line, “Time may be a great healer, but it’s a lousy beautician.”) The line above is one of my favorites, because … Read more
Perhaps you’ve read that Modern Love essay in The New York Times, the one that zipped around the country along internet tethers and social media synapses in 2015 like contagious hope, bearing an irresistible headline – “To Fall in … Read more
This has been an unsettling week. Who will forget the look on that one Charlottesville marcher’s face, a terrible echo of the hate seen on other faces as Hitler rose to power in Germany and blacks began to win their … Read more
With fewer staff writers at newspapers and magazines, freelance journalists have more opportunities to take on longform features – both on and offline. Q: What would you tell other freelancers who are reluctant to pitch longer pieces? A: I … Read more
Why is it great? Here in E.B. White’s Maine, August is bittersweet, bringing whispers of summer’s end even at the height of its ripeness. Apples, the fruit of fall, begin to color on gnarled trees. Bright yellow goldenrod sprouts around … Read more