In the first scene of the last episode of “Breaking Bad,” Walter White opens the glove box of a car he’s trying to steal and the case to a Marty Robbins cassette falls out. At the end of the scene, … Read more
If something funny comes my way — an article about dog whisperers, let’s say — I am sometimes reduced to responding with the shorthand “LOL,” though the truth is few stories make me Laugh Out Loud. The exception: a piece by … Read more
Editor’s note: This is the second installment covering this year’s “Power of Storytelling,” an annual conference in Bucharest. For the setup, and to watch the first installment, in which Esquire‘s Chris Jones talk about the intersection of storytelling and magic, go … Read more
Editor’s note: A few weeks ago, Romania’s Decât o Revistă magazine attracted a crowd of writers, editors, photographers and designers to its third annual “Power of Storytelling” conference, in Bucharest. The conference, under the leadership of Cristian Lupsa, a … Read more
Today’s theme: courage. Pinned, for your storytelling pleasure, we’ve got stories in several shades of bravery, by talented narrative journalists from Kansas City, Milwaukee, Boston, New York, Tampa and Washington, D.C. You can find all of these, and more, on … Read more
An interesting writing move recently caught my eye in Rosalind Bentley’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution profile of poet laureate Natasha Trethewey. For lack of a better name, I’ll call it the “narrative overview,” and I now see it everywhere. Read more
Woody Allen has written and directed an original film nearly every year since 1969. He has written several Broadway plays, published dozens of pieces in The New Yorker and given innumerable interviews. As far as I know, though, he has … Read more
Pinned for your storytelling pleasure, a roundup of recent great reads, vids, tips, etc.: In case you missed it, Part 1: Gay Talese and Elon Green annihilated Storyboard traffic records this week with their critically acclaimed annotation of “Frank … Read more
Gay Talese lives on the East Side of Manhattan, in a four-story brownstone he moved into in 1958, at age 26. When we met there recently to talk about his iconic Esquire profile “ … Read more
Since the first stirrings of the Nieman Foundation’s narrative writing program nearly 20 years ago, the staff has tended a treasure trove of resource material devoted to excellence in journalistic storytelling. Much of that material went online first via the … Read more