Editor Kayla Webley Adler is a freelancer’s dream. She’s willing to gamble on unknown writers if they bring her a great idea. She’s written a detailed guide to pitching that she’ll share with anyone who asks. And she responds … Read more
The tap water in Flint, Michigan, went bad more than four years ago, when the budget-strapped city stopped drawing its water from Lake Huron and the Detroit River and switched to a cheaper source: the Flint River. The … Read more
There is much to consider in that straightforward sentence. A small child, only 2. A girl-child, if that matters, but that conjurs the universal image of a child clutching a doll. A name that hints of national or … Read more
The first time I met Tommy Tomlinson, he and his wife, Alix Felsing, took me to their favorite spot for breakfast in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they lived and where Tommy wrote a wildly popular column for the … Read more
Notes on interviewing process Jacqui Banaszynski The panel was promoted as “The Art of the Interview.” And based on the range of advice from four … Read more
Sentences can seem simple. Even the most tangled and complex are just a few words arranged between punctuation and white space. Ideally they make sense standing alone. But sentences never really stand alone. They live in context, with … Read more
John McPhee John McPhee, a master of nonfiction storytelling, became a teacher by accident. In 1974, when he was a fast-rising star at The New Yorker, his alma … Read more
New York Times sportswriter John Branch is best known in the journalism world for “Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek.” His gripping long-form narrative, which reconstructed a fatal avalanche in the Washington … Read more
I‘ve always thought writing should be learned by osmosis. Like if you read enough good books you shouldn’t need to know the exact rules about dangling participles. But I’m a journalist and maybe I give off a vibe, … Read more
An award-winning author writes a break-out novel, and then another, and then… It has been 10 years since Minnesota novelist Leif Enger‘s last book, “So Brave, Young and Handsome,” was published. That followed soon after his best-selling … Read more
