“Why’s This So Good?” No. 98: Craig Childs and Muddy Waters
Several writers have explored the ecological transformation of the Colorado River, dammed decades ago to supply water for 33 million people in the West and northern Mexico, but Craig Childs may be the...
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Annotation Tuesday! Boris Muñoz and “Emptying the Tower of David, the World’s...
Boris Muñoz Boris Muñoz has spent most of his journalistic career in Venezuela, but has lived in the U.S. both while pursuing a PhD at Rutgers and since his year as a Nieman Fellow in 2009-2010. He...
View Article“Why’s This So Good?” No. 99: Renata Adler and ‘Reckless Disregard’
Complex litigation of the kind typically handled by large corporate law firms contains no shortage of absurdities; indeed, absurdity can sometimes seem to be its basic condition, despite the sobering...
View ArticleErik Vance: “Scientists are quirky everywhere”
The National Association of Science Writers gave Erik Vance a 2015 Science in Society award for science reporting for his story “Why Nothing Works,” published in Discover magazine, saying his...
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Roger Lowenstein: “I don’t like the word simplify; I prefer the word explain”
Roger Lowenstein Author and former Wall Street Journal reporter Roger Lowenstein on turning the intricacies of finance into compelling narrative Roger Lowenstein is the author of six nonfiction books,...
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In Search of the ‘Southern Voice’
When I was a child, my father would sometimes mention The Great Southern Novel he’d always wanted to write. I remember the protagonist as a poor, small-town man who’d somehow made a go of it in...
View ArticleAnnotation Tuesday! Faith Kohler and the documentary “30 Seconds Away”
In cities across the country, hundreds of thousands of homeless men, women and children live on the streets. We pass by them every day, yet they are almost invisible to society, willfully ignored by...
View ArticleNarrative Conferences and Workshops: Where to Hone Your Skills in 2016
Happy Narrative New Year! If you resolved to get better at narrative in 2016, or even just to figure out what it is, here’s a list of conferences and workshops where you can listen, learn and network....
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Harnessing the Power of Video Games for Journalism
You’re looking at a map of New York City when a red stick figure drops on the corner of Nostrand and Atlantic in Brooklyn. “Lauren is having a heart attack!” To save her, you must get her to the...
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Annotation Tuesday!: Anthony Ronzio of the Bangor Daily News on “The Good Life”
Anthony Ronzio Gabor Degre/BDN Over the past two years the Bangor Daily News, a small-town newspaper in central Maine, has made a name for itself by publishing ambitious multimedia features online....
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From Esquire Classic: Tom Junod on Profiling Hilary Clinton
Tom Junod Hillary Clinton has changed greatly over the past twenty-five years of public service, as First Lady, then Senator, then Secretary of State, and now presidential front-runner. No one has...
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Jake Silverstein: “Immersing you in worlds not your own”
Jake Silverstein started editing the New York Times Magazine in May 2014, after six years editing Texas Monthly. During Silverstein’s tenure as editor, then editor-in-chief at Texas Monthly,the...
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“Why’s This So Good?” No. 100: Susan Dominus and ‘Hana’
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...
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Annotation Tuesday!: Jenna Pirog on virtual reality in “The Displaced”
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...
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From Esquire Classic: Gay Talese on Profiling boxer Floyd Patterson
To help celebrate Floyd Patterson’s birthday, let’s turn for a moment to Esquire Hall of Famer Gay Talese, who called Patterson a “writer’s dream.” Esquire Classic: You wrote more than thirty stories...
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The 5 Most Read “Why’s This So Good?” Essays
We just posted our 100th “Why’s This So Good?,” Abeer Najjar’s look at the Susan Dominus story in the New York Times Magazine, “Hana.” Nearly twice a month since June 2011, we’ve had accomplished...
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Annotation Tuesday! Emily Yoffe and “The College Rape Overcorrection”
Emily Yoffe When Emily Yoffe started looking into the issue of young men being expelled from colleges over alleged sexual assaults, she had in mind writing a “cheeky” 2,500-word story telling them...
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Notable Narrative: Ken Armstrong, T. Christian Miller and “An Unbelievable...
Ken Armstrong and T. Christian Miller found themselves in the odd position of moving from competitors to collaborators, over the course of a phone call or two and a few emails. Miller says calling the...
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From Esquire Classic: Looking at John Sack’s “M”
John Sack is an integral part of Esquire lore. This was the guy who sneaked aboard an American landing ship during the Korean War to interview Chinese POWs; the guy who shadowed the grunts of M Company...
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Annotation Tuesday!: Teju Cole on “Far Away From Here”
I first met Teju Cole under a tree strung with white lights. It was six years ago, at a book party in lower Manhattan, at the apartment of someone fortunate enough to have a backyard. All around us...
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