One of my earliest childhood memories was having cash in my hand and roaming a baqala, or a corner store, in my Middle Eastern hometown. I remember the South Asian employee who patiently watched me decide which treat to buy … Read more
The 14th Street subway station was hot and noisy with gossip and foot traffic, with a lingering scent of something musty I couldn’t immediately identify. I could hear mediocre performers play instruments in the distance, the subway’s automated announcements weaving … Read more
If interviewing is an art, Krys Boyd has had plenty of practice with her paintbrush. For a remarkable five days a week for the past 11 years, the Texas journalist has been illustrating the depth and context of current events … Read more
The big screens on suburban, prairie and desert roadsides once beaconed families and lovers. Now they’re mostly tattered and forlorn, a reminder of America’s midcentury love affair with the open road, the automobile and the Hollywood dream factory. Three years … Read more
The photograph on the cover of Abbie Gascho Landis’ “Immersion” is the first hint that the book is going to be surprising. The image is at once coy and inviting, a puckered pout that is somehow so voluptuous that … Read more
Like most journalists today, Britni de la Cretaz is accustomed to being on the receiving end of comments from critical readers and opinionated trolls. As a freelance writer who frequently tackles important and uncomfortable subjects, both about herself and about … Read more
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
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
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
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
