Years ago, the wonderful Walt Harrington came to our newsroom and fired us up. We were at the start of a storytelling revival, trying to find our way back to craft, and Walt’s book “Intimate Journalism” had just … Read more
It was the altitude, officially. If the flight attendant was concerned about my tears, or if the little girl in the pink hoodie across the aisle was curious: Reading at 13,000 feet makes one susceptible to mood swings. It’s a … Read more
Over the years Roy Blount Jr. has written a number of superb magazine articles, one of my favorites being “Knock ’im Out, Jay-ree!” a profile of the great Southern raconteur Jerry (pronounced Jay-ree) Clower. The piece, which appeared … Read more
Just shoot me now. That might be a normal journalist’s reaction to news that the subject of a mega-profile for a magazine cover story has declined to be interviewed for the piece. But in the mid-1960s Gay Talese was anything … Read more
Writing about the writing process isn’t easy, for good reason. Turning words into sentences and sentences into scenes is at heart a craft, yet there’s still a certain amount of magic involved. Synapses fire. Muses play. That magic, which manifests … Read more
I love teaching “The Pig” because students, especially narrative nonfiction students, always freak out. “Wait, we can do this?” they want to know. Yes, you can do this and I’d like to see you try. Nailing the reporting lets … Read more
I wish I had come to this assignment when Alice Steinbach was still alive. I could have thanked her one last time for writing “A Boy of Unusual Vision,” a stunning immersion into the life, mind and vision … Read more
Malcolm Gladwell does so many things well as a feature writer that it’s embarrassing to mention them all. I’ll list a few of them anyway: Malcolm Gladwell is astonishingly quotable. He writes graceful, intelligent sentences. But he’s also something better … Read more
So, you, a journalist, are given this ridiculous, outrageous assignment: Write a story about one of your own, a writer who betrayed your profession on a spectacular scale. It’s the story of Stephen Glass, perhaps the most remarkable fabulist ever … Read more
It was summer; it was winter. The village disappeared behind skeins of fog. Fishermen came and went in boats named Reverence, Granite Prince, Souwester. Whenever I find my writing drifting into the simple staccato of basic exposition, whenever I question … Read more