This week, identity is the theme that courses through the posts. Writer Steve Oney talks about masculinity and the creation of identity as an act of will. In South Africa, the women of the District Six neighborhood try to recapture … Read more
Why is it great? Yes, it’s more than one sentence. But in this one short stanza, Cramer has captured all the rage and sorrow and loneliness and drive of the legendary Red Sox hitter Ted Williams. This is one of … Read more
“What It Takes,” Richard Ben Cramer’s exhaustive account of the 1988 presidential election, took so long to report and write—six years in all—that it wasn’t published until the 1992 election. Clocking in at over 1,000 pages, it’s a … Read more
Since it debuted in 1933, Esquire has helped launch and promote the careers of dozens of renowned writers, from Raymond Carver and Richard Ford to Cynthia Ozick and Elizabeth Gilbert. Under the leadership of Harold Hayes and fiction editor Gordon … Read more
Whether you spell them “ledes” or “leads,” opening lines get a lot of attention. And why wouldn’t they? Sitting at the keyboard, with all the tedious and sometimes annoying reporting done, a writer is spoiled for choice, a world of … Read more
I got the deal to write my first book, Horsemen of the Esophagus, in the spring of 2005. I’d been out of college for four years at that point, writing for two different magazines, in Cincinnati and Philadelphia. I’d never … Read more
I think it’s fair to say that most of America was shocked when news of Tiger Woods’ sex scandal broke in late 2009. I’m also pretty sure that anyone who had read “The Man. Amen.” by Charles … Read more
CBS’ coverage When Richard Ben Cramer died Monday, at 62, of lung cancer, the outpouring of grief and gratitude began immediately. It’s hard to find a narrative journalist or … Read more
In Part 3 of our recap of Romania’s “Power of Storytelling” conference on narrative journalism, radio producer Starlee Kine talked about story forms and themes; Esquire‘s Mike Sager talked about listening, and about suspending disbelief; and Pulitzer winner Alex Tizon talked about writing … Read more
Where is Edna Buchanan when we need her? Admittedly, the lede on this recent Associated Press story wasn’t half bad: MIAMI — A witness says a naked man chewing on the face of another naked man on a downtown highway ramp kept … Read more
