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Notable Narrative: The Marshall Project’s Maurice Chammah and “The Accusation”
In the opening of Maurice Chammah’s story “The Accusation,” jointly published by Esquire and The Marshall Project, we meet Katie Spencer Tetz, a 25-year-old woman who learns that her father is getting...
View Article“If the history of the earth’s tides should one day be written by some...
Why is it great? Few authors have written as magnificently about nature as Rachel Carson, and this sentence is a good example. Its strength is not in form but content. It revealed to me something I...
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5(ish) Questions: Abbie Gascho Landis and the surprising climate book...
The photograph on the cover of Abbie Gascho Landis’ “Immersion” is the first hint that the book is going to be surprising. The image is at once coy and inviting, a puckered pout that is somehow so...
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The big tent that is storytelling: embracing the richness (and beauty) of its...
It shouldn’t be surprising that storytelling was the focus this week on Storyboard: That’s what we do. But I love the variety of the storytelling on offer. A narrative about a recanted abuse...
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Documentary film as “home movie”: Going beyond a public face to reveal a...
Almost all of us have home movies of our families somewhere, from the flickering black and white of 8-millimeter film to the Instagramable perfection of an iPhone video. We like to think of them as a...
View Article“I know all about reporters, Walter. A lot of daffy buttinskis running around...
Why is it great? Yes, it’s three sentences. But it’s one brilliant summation of journalists, from the best-written movie about journalists of all time. God, the banter in the screenplay! I love how...
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5(ish) Questions: Photographer Lindsay Rickert and “Drive-In America”
The big screens on suburban, prairie and desert roadsides once beaconed families and lovers. Now they’re mostly tattered and forlorn, a reminder of America’s midcentury love affair with the open road,...
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For film week, home movies and drive-ins (and David Foster Wallace on David...
It was a lot of fun focusing on movies this week on Storyboard. Each day I tweeted out some of the best-written lines in filmdom — including the best one-word line ever: “Rosebud.” Here on the site, we...
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Notable Narrative: The Cincinnati Enquirer’s stunning “Seven Days of Heroin”
As far as Terry DeMio knows, she’s the only journalist in the country with the title “heroin reporter.” She’s been covering the opioid epidemic for The Cincinnati Enquirer for five years, including two...
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5(ish) Questions: Texas journalist Krys Boyd and the art of the radio interview
If interviewing is an art, Krys Boyd has had plenty of practice with her paintbrush. For a remarkable five days a week for the past 11 years, the Texas journalist has been illustrating the depth and...
View Article“Something in the world links faces and leaves and rivers and woods and wind...
Why is it great? Written long before every person carried a camera, before Facebook, back when “streaming” was just what water did as it coursed through its bed, Goyen, raised in a small town in East...
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Zooming in on two of America’s biggest stories: culture wars and opioid epidemic
Two of the biggest stories in America today are the culture wars that seem to be deepening the divide in the country and the opioid crisis that is devastating a huge swath of rural and urban America....
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Ellen Barry and “How to Get Away with Murder in Small-Town India”
In March, The New York Times announced that its India-based South Asia bureau chief, Ellen Barry, would relocate to London to become chief international correspondent. Accordingly, Barry loaded...
View Article“We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just...
Why is it great? This sentence is one of the most vivid metaphors I’ve ever read. It captures the helplessness of a life of desperation, where you can’t even jump from the window, just stare out of it,...
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New York’s “Subway Therapist” and his collage of a city’s hopes and fears
The 14th Street subway station was hot and noisy with gossip and foot traffic, with a lingering scent of something musty I couldn’t immediately identify. I could hear mediocre performers play...
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A mass shooting in the news, and loss also in longform — but always, always hope
Loss was too much with us this week, as we learned of yet another mass shooting that beggars the imagination. And it’s a theme of this week’s posts, too. In India, The New York Times’ Ellen Barry...
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The Pitch: Jason Fagone on Landing “The Willy Wonka of Pot” in Grantland
Magazine pitches are an elusive species. You hear talk of them at journalism conferences and in freelancer forums. You see evidence of their existence in the stories they beget. But it’s rare to catch...
View Article“The private estate was far enough away from the explosion so that its...
Why is it great? Great writers fear not the long sentence, and here is proof. If a short sentence speaks a gospel truth, then a long one takes us on a kind of journey. This is best undertaken when...
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5(ish) Questions: “Bodega Stories” creator talks about her love for the...
One of my earliest childhood memories was having cash in my hand and roaming a baqala, or a corner store, in my Middle Eastern hometown. I remember the South Asian employee who patiently watched me...
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This week Storyboard launched a series on the unicorn of longform: the story...
I’m so excited about this series we’ve just launched on Storyboard called “The Pitch,” in which we try to demystify the unicorn of longform: the story pitch. Contributor Katia Savchuk will talk to...
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