By Kim Cross There are many worthy books about the narrative craft of great storytelling. But the story behind a story — the hurdles, dilemmas, ethical quandaries and logic puzzles invisible in a seamless final draft —can be … Read more
A while ago, preparing to teach a literary nonfiction class, I reread Nellie Bly’s “Ten Days in a Mad House,” her account of going undercover in 1887 into Blackwell’s Insane Asylum for Women. Bly is known for her bravery … Read more
Joan Didion died on December 23, 2021, and by Christmas internet searches were returning page after page of obituaries that described her as a “peerless prose stylist.” She has long been celebrated as a journalist, essayist, novelist and memoirist, … Read more
In her memoir about the death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne, Joan Didion writes about the night she lost the man who can only be described as her other half. She recalls how a social worker described her to … Read more
It’s easy to miss. A sobering second, surrounded by intemperance. But there it is, the transitional scene after Hunter S. Thompson opens “The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved” with some lewd banter in a … Read more