At last year’s Power of Narrative conference at Boston University, the poet Verandah Porche asked Gay Talese which women writers he admired. “All of us seem to be on the beat of retrieving what’s missing, what’s unheard.” He couldn’t … Read more
Daniel Miller’s coverage of the film business for the Los Angeles Times typically involves tracking the latest moves of the industry’s glitzy corporate behemoths. For his five-part series “Selling Stardom,” he dug into Hollywood’s darker side. People have … Read more
You know when you absentmindedly click on a product and an ad for the thing seems to stalk you online for the rest of your life? (I once thought the name “Mrs. Pasture’s Horse Cookies” charming. Now, with eternal repetition, … Read more
One of the first works I read by Ted Conover, the country’s reigning master of immersion reporting, was “Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing,” his 2000 book chronicling 10 months he spent guarding a maximum-security prison. That’s probably why I had imagined … Read more
Just in time for the weekend, here’s a little list of some of the things I’ve been listening to and reading this week, some of it online — Storyboard included, natch — and some of it on vinyl or actual … Read more
In a media landscape quite dependent on quick takes on Twitter and videos transmitted by smartphones, Eli Saslow’s byline offers reassurance of the staying power of the written word. We know what follows will offer a depth of humanity that’s … Read more
Just in time for the weekend, here’s a little list of some of the things I’ve been listening to and reading this week, some of it online — Storyboard included, natch — and some of it on vinyl or actual … Read more
Like a lot of people “from away” with a stake in Maine, I’ve been reading Down East magazine for several years now. It was a comfort read, something that connected me to the state. It took awhile to notice that … Read more
When I saw that Robert Sanchez, a senior writer at Denver magazine 5280, had taken on Colorado Springs in his story for the publication’s April issue, I couldn’t wait to read it. Like Sanchez, I grew up in the … Read more
Longform specialist Jeff Maysh has a penchant for telling genre-breaking stories about people with secret lives. There’s the mom who assumed her daughter’s identity to return to high school; the Michigan farmer who made millions smuggling rare Pez dispensers into … Read more