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Katharine Seelye and “Life on an Island: Silence, Beauty and a Long Wait for...
“Have you ever heard the absolute silence?” So asks a young lobsterman on Maine’s Matinicus Island, one of the handful of people who live year-round on the island, 22 miles out to sea and smaller than...
View Article“The Revolutionary Hill Estates had not been designed to accommodate a tragedy.”
This 1961 book has haunted me since I first read it about 15 years ago. Written at the birth of suburbia, and the accompanying conformity of such neighborhoods, it tells the story of a couple who...
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In Sicily, an old oral storytelling tradition tries to renew itself in the...
The third-grade students in Misterbianco, a small town at the foot of Mount Etna in eastern Sicily, watched, rapt, as the heavy puppets moved on a school auditorium stage. The kids laughed, open their...
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As spring begins, a last look at winter and its juxtaposition of beauty and...
This week we celebrated the vernal equinox, this moment of rebirth and hope as we ease out of winter. (Of course, New England got hit with another snowstorm, as if winter was all Glenn Close in “Fatal...
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Amy Padnani on The New York Times’“Overlooked” obituary series
When Amy Padnani moved from The New York Times’ news desk to its obits department last year, she was charged with the task of “exploring different ways of storytelling with obituaries.” “It’s a forum...
View Article“I’d rather go down in history as one lone Negro who dared to tell the...
Why is it so great? I found this quote from the absolutely amazing Ida B. Wells after The New York Times righted an old wrong by publishing her obit — almost exactly 87 years after her death. She was...
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The Power of Narrative conference captures the #MeToo zeitgeist
This year’s Power of Narrative conference seemed to capture the #MeToo zeitgeist, with speakers like author Roxane Gay and the Boston Globe’s Sacha Pfeiffer talking about the uncomfortable truths of...
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Ida B. Wells and Roxane Gay — fierce women of color born a century apart,...
Looking back at this week’s posts, I was struck by the similarities between two of the writers we spotlighted. Ida B. Wells was a brave, pioneering investigative journalist who fought for women’s...
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Newest Americans: stories of immigrants who help make the country great
When Mexican director Guillermo del Toro won his best directing Oscar recently for “Shape of Water,” he said: “I am an immigrant. The greatest thing our art does is to erase the lines in the sand. We...
View Article“Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are...
Why is it so great? When I was looking for a One Great Sentence dealing with immigration, I was struck by the differences between America’s two presidents named Roosevelt. In the one above, FDR reminds...
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The New Yorker’s “Lost Giant of American Literature” and the prism of race
You could say there’s a certain symmetry to the fact William Melvin Kelley, the black “lost giant of American literature,” as The New Yorker called him earlier this year, was “rediscovered” by a white...
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Point of view: a powerful narrative tool
Point of view is a powerful narrative tool. Take, for example, the Newest Americans project that we spotlighted this week. For some politicians and hate-mongerers, immigrants are a scourge. But in this...
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Sharing a cup of tea with London blogger “The Gentle Author”
“In the midst of life I woke to find myself living in an old house beside Brick Lane in the East End of London.” “The only place in London where you can talk to people, and there is a culture of...
View Article“The Sun specializes in short items unlikely to tax the mental capacities of...
Why is it great? Well, first of all, it comes from the great Sarah Lyall, who was the longtime London correspondent for The New York Times. She has such a wonderful voice: charming, funny, intimate....
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It came from the sewers of London: the utterly disgusting (yet fascinating)...
“We walk through life influenced by all sorts of weird stuff,” says “Letter of Recommendation” editor Willy Staley. His column in The New York Times Magazine offers a place to celebrate those...
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“London is a very dangerous subject for a writer, because it will always...
This week we pay tribute to London, a city that seems like it’s being pulled in two directions: toward its tremendous past and its wildly creative yet uncertain future. As the blogger known as “The...
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The Pitch: The story ideas Mother Jones’ managing editor wants to see
Mother Jones is known for its hard-hitting investigations, like Shane Bauer’s 35,000-word undercover account of working as a private prison guard in Louisiana, which won a National Magazine Award for...
View Article“sweet spring is your time is my time is our time for springtime is lovetime...
Why is it great? You know how it seems like spring will never arrive, you wait and you wait, and it’s dreary and cold, and then suddenly, in one day, it seems to arrive? In New England they call it the...
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Five immersive photographers share their experiences on gaining trust
Access is everything when it comes to documentary photography. Of all the challenges that immersion storytellers face in their work, perhaps none is more formidable. “Humanity should always come first....
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5(ish) Questions for Douglas Haynes and “Every Day We Live Is the Future”
Douglas Haynes spent nearly 10 years working on his book “Every Day We Live is the Future: Surviving in a City of Disasters.” So when it was finally published late last year, he was understandably...
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