The director wasn’t satisfied. “Do it again,” she said, after we finished the scene. We did. “Do it again.” We did. “Do it again.” And so on, until we got it right. Or close enough. It was my first … Read more
Mitchell S. Jackson was worried. It was May 2020, and he had just sent his agent the prologue of his latest novel. Jackson, a contributing writer for Esquire and author of two celebrated books, said to himself, “I really … Read more
“If you know what you want to say, you’ll figure out how to say it.” That’s what Steve Padilla, editor of Column One at the Los Angeles Times, told a virtual gathering of the San Diego Press Club on … Read more
Harried doctors and nurses, gowned in eerie layers, race to the call of codes. Hospital hallways overflow with the near-dead. Undertakers scramble to make space as body after body arrives, and refrigerated trucks are crammed with more, all waiting … Read more
Growing up in California, Francesca Mari found herself in proximity to spaces that felt somewhat foreign. Decades later, her sense of story traces to her desire to understand how the world works. The 35-year-old freelance journalist grew up in … Read more
One of the most heartbreaking realities of the coronavirus pandemic is particularly harsh: Patients usually die alone, separated from their loved ones with only a cellphone or iPad to say goodbye, while a nurse holds their hand. And with … Read more
It all seems fated, somehow: The two cyclists, meeting by chance in an empty stretch of the Kazakh desert, yes, but also the writer stumbling across their story years later in an Alabama bike shop. Read more
The announcement of Kamala Harris as Joe Biden’s running mate on the Democratic presidential ticket was barely two minutes old when sitting President Donald Trump called Harris “nasty.” He followed with a relentless volley of demeaning insults. And by … Read more
During the 15 years that Chip Scanlan taught writing workshops at the Poynter Institute, he wrote a popular column called “Chip on Your Shoulder.” Searching Poynter’s archives takes some work, but you can find a … Read more
I’m bleary-eyed as I write this. Late last night, I finished several weeks of binge-watching “The West Wing,” all 156 episodes of the nostalgic political series which ran on television for seven seasons between 1999 and 2006, dramatizing the … Read more
