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
A few days ago, I had the disturbing experience of stepping barefoot on the bloody, decapitated body of a mouse. My first reaction was of course a back-wheeling step away from the corpse. My second was to clean off my … Read more
In today’s America, the word “masculinity” is almost a Rorschach test. When you look at it, do you see a patrimony that is raging, raging against the dying of the light? Or do you see an assault on the concept … Read more
It was a tragic wreck, and dramatic, in a rural Maine way. A Toyota Corolla collided with a milk truck. Milk spilled across the interstate. A man was dead. From this bit of news from January, Portland Press Herald journalist … Read more
Few journalists are more versed in guns and gun violence than Mark Follman. As national affairs editor for Mother Jones, Follman has led a series of landmark investigations into everything from mass shootings to child gun deaths. Even now, with … Read more
The 2016 Rio de Janeiro Summer Olympics offered a host of memorable storylines: 28-time medal winner Michael Phelps’ final race, Ryan Lochte’s bizarre fabrication of a gunpoint robbery, and the “will they, won’t they” speculation as to … Read more
One month ago today, an assassin fired 12 bullets at Mexican journalist Javier Valdez Cárdenas as he drove away from the office of Ríodoce, where he had long filed some of the most searing journalism on that country’s drug war. Read more
