It is widely believed that storytellers can turn almost anything into a good story, which gives them a bottomless well of topics. But even the celebrated ones, like Romanian-Moldovan writer Tatiana Tîbuleac, who won the … Read more
Sometimes I push writing students to look for new ways to tell stories. Should you start with the “small” things? Is there a story in the way a character dresses? How about the things they hang on the wall … Read more
The first time I met Tommy Tomlinson, he and his wife, Alix Felsing, took me to their favorite spot for breakfast in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they lived and where Tommy wrote a wildly popular column for the … Read more
Why is it great? Well, first of all, it comes from the great Sarah Lyall, who was the longtime London correspondent for The New York Times. She has such a wonderful voice: charming, funny, intimate. This comes from her book … Read more
Why is it so great? For Valentine’s Day, we had to go with One Great Sentence on love (even if the holiday makes you go harrumph). This one is a doozy. It’s uplifting — love makes you brave enough to … Read more
I remember first hearing Francisco Cantú’s story sometime last year, spooling out from my car speakers as I wound through mountain curves many hundreds of miles from the border he writes about. He was telling a story of his … Read more
Why is it so great? This is not only one of the best one-word sentences in a memoir, it’s also possibly the only one-word chapter in a memoir. And the final chapter, to boot. So it also ranks up there … Read more
In August 1991, I read John Cheever’s journal excerpts published in The New Yorker. I was a 19-year-old college dropout, a waitress, and in the half hour before starting my shift, I sat outside my local library, electrified by this candid, … Read more
It’s hard to cull just one sentence from Sedaris’ embedded reporting on being a helper at Santaland, a place he describes as “a real wonderland” with a path taking visitors through the “ten thousand sparkling lights, false snow, train sets, … Read more
Why is it great? Written long before every person carried a camera, before Facebook, back when “streaming” was just what water did as it coursed through its bed, Goyen, raised in a small town in East Texas, believed we could … Read more
