Getting stuck next to a compulsive talker is one of the worst things that can happen at a dinner party or on a long bus ride. Even worse: the self-centered compulsive talker. What makes this experience so awful? The person’s … Read more
We admired the balance in this piece of detachment and emotion, of distance and closeness. We appreciated the close attention to telling detail, action, gesture and also the willingness to frame the piece with more sweeping observations. This is not … Read more
This is a story about the power of story and stories: the power of telling them, of withholding them; the weight they bear in families; the power they have to heal, bring resolution. In this story French writes about his … Read more
What stands out among all the lovely elements in this series is Tizon’s use of the first and second persons. Come join me on a journey, he says. And if you’ve just joined me, let me fill you in. In … Read more
As in all of Siegel’s stories on this site, all of which cover in some sense an “endangered child,” he portrays emotional content—in this case a young boy’s death, his parents’ senseless loss—while making a contribution to the way we … Read more
Siegel builds this piece on effective, masterful movement from story-telling through explanatory digressions and back to story. The digressions advance not just our understanding of how this girl could come to die in the way she did, but also the … Read more
Many—surprisingly, perhaps most—of the stories we read for this site are about, or involve, children we worry about: They're alone, ill, miseducated, lost in the system, abandoned or abused. Mark Kramer calls such pieces "endangered children" stories. They're attractive to newspaper writers because children are of universal concern to the community. Portray a child in a fix and everyone cares. But precisely because the dilemmas of children are emotionally fraught, writers run the risk of veering into mawkishness—a tack that's too easy and that often evades the social complications at the heart of any story. We asked Barry Siegel, director of the literary journalism program at UC Irvine, to offer some advice. Read more
What consistently sets Siegel’s writing apart from many other newspaper narratives is his ability and willingness to construct an authoritative, muscular “argument.” In this case, he shows how a middle-class community in the 1960s failed to prevent a child’s murder, … Read more
The title of this piece triggered our mawkishness radar: It signals tragedy; we wondered how such tragedy would be handled. Reading, we thought the piece teeters on the edge of too much. But it’s also a powerful story, and it … Read more