Few writers can captivate an audience with a more than 16,000-word dive into the inner workings of a nursing home. But Katie Engelhart’s exploration of America’s first COVID hot-spot — the Life Care Center of Kirkland, Washington — is … Read more
This past Labor Day, three reporters in Salem, Oregon were enjoying the holiday weekend. They’d done a good job preparing stories in advance so they wouldn’t have to scramble the next day to fill their news site, the … Read more
On Oct. 9, 1983, the body of Timothy Wayne Coggins, a 23-year-old Black man, was found in the woods off a power line easement in Griffin, Georgia. He had been stabbed dozens of times and an “X,” like the … Read more
Josh Sanburn went deep into a place of death — and found a story that teems with life. In “The Last of the First Responders,” published in June in Vanity Fair, Sanburn and … Read more
While reading the news in 2017, filmmaker Erin Lee Carr first saw the “very wide, intense eyes” of Michelle Carter. She looked like a “deer in headlights,” Carr said. At the time, Carter was on trial in … Read more
Janica Johnson flipped her reporter’s notebook open to an empty page as she and her team prepared for an interview with Donna Shows, a cell biologist from the Benaroya Research Institute. They had specific questions in mind about … Read more
Four centuries ago this year, a privateer named the White Lion anchored off Point Comfort, an English colony in what is now Hampton, Virginia. In its cramped hold, it carried 20 or so human beings kidnapped from an ancient … Read more
In the seven years since Max Linsky co-founded the Longform Podcast (with Evan Ratliff and Aaron Lammer), he has interviewed hundreds of storytelling luminaries: journalists, non-fiction writers and public figures. That includes “Wild” author Cheryl … Read more
If there were no Robert Caro, he could not easily be invented. Consider the job description: Commit your career to exhaustive research into the lives of two legendarily powerful men, produce a tome every eight or 10 or 12 … Read more
In The Armies of the Night (1968), his “nonfiction novel” about the Vietnam War, Norman Mailer made himself a central protagonist. Far from being defensive about this radical breach of journalistic convention, he advocated personalized reportage with gusto. “I … Read more
