Six years ago, in the early days of the Syrian uprising, a group of anti-government activists in a Damascus suburb decided to start their own newspaper. “If I look back to myself reporting at that time, we were amateurs. Read more
A quote in one of this week’s posts has stuck in my mind. It’s by a former journalist who started a live-storytelling group in Beirut. What she says applies to that form of oral storytelling, but also to literary journalism … Read more
As the Arab Spring began to topple a wave of repressive governments six years ago, many members of the fledgling group Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism thought things were finally going to get a little easier in a region where … 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
The first line of Rania Abouzeid’s story “The Jihad Next Door” could be the opener of a literary spy novel. “The eight men, beards trimmed, explosive belts fastened, pistols and grenades concealed in their clothing, waited until nightfall before … Read more
A spring blizzard this week left me without power for 16 hours, and at first I felt unmoored because there was no heat, no light — and no Internet connection. It revealed how plugged in my life is. But can … Read more
The tears began streaming down my face when I woke up to the voice message from Mohammad Abu Rajab, a doctor in the besieged districts of east Aleppo. A couple of days before, his words to me had come to … Read more
Carrie Roy saw it in her head before the conversation was even over—a giant wooden sculpture of the back half of a cow, atop a square brown plinth of manure. She was sitting in a bar in Madison, Wisconsin, … Read more
A good story transports its audience to the scene of the action. The classics of narrative nonfiction are memorable because they find the words that put the reader in the author’s shoes, witnessing the key moments as they unfold—think of … Read more
Refugee children usually appear in the news media because they’ve died in a shocking accident, or they’re seen as a threat to the social order or the security of a nation where they’ve fled. In “The Displaced,” the … Read more
