When looking for advice, writers shouldn’t be picky; sometimes even a fictional cannibal will serve. When NBC aired a series about Hannibal Lecter, the psychiatrist who moonlights as a serial killer — or maybe it’s the other way … Read more
It’s not possible for the everyday reader to know who wrote that sentence. The lead writer who was pulling feeds from several reporters in the field? One of the field reporters who had scratched it in theirs notes? An … Read more
They are no longer novel, these personal stories the front lines of the coronavirus. Reporters are barred from the kind of immersion that allows eye-witness accounts from that expanding front. We can interview people who are at the heart … Read more
My wife, Karen, and I happen to have for more than a decade a good Catholic pastor, Msgr. Robert Gibbons. Among his many gifts, he is a news junkie and is endlessly fascinated with language and literature. (He is … Read more
When I came across this line, it was in a recent interview between Esquire politics blogger Charles P. Pierce and U.S. Senator Angus King, an Independent from Maine who caucuses with Democrats. The context, of … Read more
Esi Edugyan A little more than half-way through Esi Edugyan’s fine novel, we are with her protagonist at a rude boarding house in Nova Scotia. It is … Read more
The story begins with a short sentence: “Routine left us suddenly” — a succinct summarization of what Floridians were feeling after those first two weeks of March. It ran on March 13, 2o20, under a bold headline, … Read more
Editor’s note: The sentence in our headline is not the One Great Sentence flagged by Storyboard contributor Jill U. Adams. It’s the opening sentence of a profile of Iowa that sets up the sentence Adams really wrote about. “Somewhere … Read more
Who can say what causes a reader to pause, in one moment, a line or passage she might zoom through at other times? Some sudden notice of the melody of language? Some echo of a forgotten conversation? For me, … Read more
Lizzy Goodman’s “Meet Me in the Bathroom” is such a raucous oral history of New York’s indie rock scene that readers’ ears are in danger of ringing while reading. It’s vivid and grimy enough to make you feel … Read more
