Barely three years ago, Aaron Mahnke, a part-time horror-thriller writer, sat at his computer and started to drag a document to the trashcan. Just as he was about dispose of the sprawling essay he’d written with outtakes from his supernatural … Read more
Why is it great? For Halloween, I decided to use this wonderfully spooky line from Mark Twain (who in his writing and his speaking was a true master of the Great Sentence). Starting with the rhythm of “away out in … Read more
These words from journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones sum up this week’s posts on racism and white supremacism better than I ever could: “The truth is even though this is fundamental and foundational to living in the United States, this is a history … Read more
New York Times Magazine writer Nikole Hannah-Jones doesn’t pretend to be an objective observer of her subject: racial segregation. “Our job as storytellers – if we want to get people to care about things that seem to be fixed … Read more
“Along with these tots and second-honeymooners, there were Harvard freshmen, giving off that peculiar nervous glow created when a quantity of insouciance is saturated with insecurity; thick-necked Army officers with brass on their shoulders and lead in their voices; pepperings … Read more
The 22-minute “Vice News Tonight” documentary “Charlottesville: Race and Terror” provided a chilling look at the white supremacists behind the violent “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va., in August. It quickly went viral. Read more
Immersion journalism usually means the kind of reporting that Ted Genoways does: He and his photographer wife spent a year practically living with a soybean farmer and his family in Nebraska to give us a close-up look at the people … Read more
For more than 15 years now, Ted Genoways has been exploring narratives of how America reaps its food. “I think that every story works best when the writer is something of an insider-outsider and then finds a main subject … Read more
Why is it great? Chabon has tapped into that greatest of sensory effects: the ability of smells to take you back to a place, a moment, a memory. The last one, in particular, works its magic on me. The mildewy … Read more
For Dena Takruri, the power of journalism rests on its ability to give voice to the voiceless. “I’ve always been upfront about my identity and background, and it’s shaped who I am and the lens through which I see other … Read more