This week’s installment is a grab bag, offering both comedy (a courtroom debate over what exactly a copying machine is) and tragedy (the tsunami in Japan). These stories’ styles also vary wildly, ranging from a non-narrative yet suspenseful investigation into … Read more
Comic book writer and misfit Harvey Pekar spent his life bracing for the worst, and now, finally, he can relax. Pekar was a non-fiction storyteller who recorded his daily existence for others to draw. In the medium of … Read more
“Fixing Mr. Fix-it,” this month’s Notable Narrative, tells the story of inadvertent amputation, its medical reversal, and the efforts of Norm Martin—“Mr. Fix-it”’—to recover and resume his life. Author Diane Suchetka deftly describes not just an accident in a body … Read more
Newspapers struggle with representing incendiary topics in a way that explains without exploiting. Last month, The Plain Dealer’s Joanna Connors addressed sexual assault, poverty, and race in a single project. “Beyond Rape,” a 16-page supplement to the Cleveland newspaper, recounts … Read more
We liked the focus in this piece on one patient, the very clear narrative and progression from scene to scene. We thought the use of the doctor’s internal soundtrack a good structural and thematic device. Overall it’s an affecting window … Read more
This piece is in some ways “just” another story about tragically ill children. But it’s also a useful exploration of ethical issues around the lengths parents will go, understandably, to save their sick children. In this case, a doctor uses … Read more
This 7-part series’ strengths, it seems to us, are first, its ability to keep readers wondering, its handling of suspense. (Notice the suspenseful section endings in particular.) Second, the series persuasively links a particular narrative to larger social themes. One … Read more
We admire this piece for the way its tone and content match its protagonist’s own qualities. Elizabeth Balraj is the exacting and dignified coroner of Cuyahoga County. Long’s writing, too, is precise and composed. We like the considered attention to … Read more
This series got a lot of attention: The Plain Dealer’s Web traffic increased dramatically during the week of its publication, says Stuart Warner, an editor and writing coach at the paper. Warner believes that thousands of young people were drawn … Read more
Among the things that strike us in this story are the paradoxes Schultz skillfully points to: Racism helped send Green wrongfully to prison; in prison he transformed himself; out of prison he’s better able to cope with the biases he … Read more