In a full-circle illustration of the way life sometimes imitates art, screenwriting led Sarah Berns to smokejumping. Then smokejumping led to a cinematic memoir, written with a director’s eye and the architecture of a screenplay. “When I went to … Read more
As a near-spring Nor’easter hit New England this week, we showcased two recent stories about polar exploration. What intrigued me were the very different perspectives of the writers and subjects. In David Grann’s piece on explorer Henry Worsley, the focus … Read more
Adventure narratives thrive on the nearness (or near miss) of doom’s heavy paw, but Eva Holland gives readers something other than a saga of suffering and survival in her recent account of her slog across the frozen sea near … Read more
Peter Stark’s second-person rendering of a hypothermic near-death experience took its 1997 print headline from the closing quatrain of an Emily Dickinson poem that, depending who you ask, is either an immortal bummer of a ballad to the totalizing … Read more
Elizabeth Weil, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and Outside, says she doesn’t write about “super important” things. But her warm and captivating voice has animated every subject she’s chosen to tackle over her 22-year career writing … Read more
This week I left the snows of New England for a visit to my old stomping grounds in California. It was a bit head-spinning for a couple of reasons: When I left last year, California was in drought. Now it’s … Read more
Rich Schapiro is always searching. Whether he’s writing a quick-hit 800-word spot feature for the New York Daily News or a magazine feature that’s taken years to report, Schapiro is on the hunt for deeper meaning — a “character conflict,” … Read more
Profiles are hard. Too often they’re drenched in the writer’s attempts to make the subject seem larger than life. But good profiles have the opposite effect: Through their honesty and attention to perhaps mundane detail — and, as Outside Magazine contributing editor … Read more
Why is it great? Even without context, this line is tremendous. Playfully riffing off Chekhov’s rule that if you introduce a gun in the first act, it absolutely must go off by the third, Solomon transforms a prosaic garden implement into something … 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