November 4, 2009 – 2:04 pm
We often highlight stories from reporters who are well-known in the world of narrative journalism, but a lot of unsung writers slip narratives into print and online daily. Here are some moving stories with sharp scenes or imagery from three people we bet you’ve never heard of.
“Sacia’s Promise,” from Kaitlin Manry of The (Everett) Herald:
“She remembers waking up in the middle of the night, just 2 or 3 years old. Her nightgown is wet. So is her bed. She walks into the living room, calling for her mom. She’s not there. Sacia instead finds a stranger, a man, dividing piles of little white rocks spread across the coffee table. The pearly white stones are like baby teeth and crumble when he touches them. She runs back to her bed and stays up all night, kneeling on wet sheets, waiting for a mother who never comes.”
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June’s first Notable Narrative recounts the story of Blue Platoon, Killer Troop, whose soldiers returned to the U.S. in 2009 after finishing one of the last 15-month combat tours in Iraq. The story behind this multimedia project is simple and all too familiar: The Killer Blue soldiers serve. Some die. Others make it home. And [...]
March 16, 2007 – 12:00 am
As part of his 12-step program, William Beebe apologizes to Liz Seccuro for the harm he caused her. He and others expect Seccuro to forgive and move on. Not surprisingly, this is not something she can do. This excellent piece reconstructs a series of events with good detail; it also gets at the perspectives of [...]
March 15, 2007 – 10:39 am
This elegiac piece is at once memoir and a tribute to both DeSilva’s own father and his generation. It poses a mystery, draws readers in with it and resolves it, with grace and elegance. We admired the structural clarity of the piece; the composed, self-aware voice, the lovely detail.
January 3, 2007 – 12:00 am
Bruce DeSilva wrote us this about the piece: “Rukmini Callimachi is an AP bureau writer with less than 5 years in the business. She set out to do a situationer on the 30 Katrina victims still unidentified and unburied. The New Orleans parish coroner had been unwilling to share much information with the press, but [...]
September 25, 2006 – 12:00 am
We like the ways that Anna uses one scene to reveal tensions that persist in India around race and inequity. She points to ironies in the shooting of a film about imperialism while the “natives”—the extras—get restless.
September 25, 2006 – 12:00 am
This is a effective example of how narrative can flesh out, give dignity to, people who feel they are, as a central character says in this story, “just a number in someone’s book.” The story also uses narrative to make human a larger economic story, that of the decline of American heavy manufacturing and the [...]
We include this piece in part because of its strong authorial presence. Sedensky guides readers through his portrait of Fred Phelps with a firm hand. Here’s an example: “They’re not doing this to save you. They’re doing it to save themselves.” This assertiveness, the willingness to tell us what’s up and the use of the [...]
January 16, 2006 – 12:00 am
This journal about traveling with bird-destruction teams in Turkey is honest, informative and full of voice.
This is an intimate sharing of a difficult journey. The author uses first person not to grandstand, but to communicate knowingly, American to American, about cultural assumptions around cleanliness and lawfulness and comprehension of risk. Repeated violations of such standards [...]
December 27, 2005 – 12:00 am
This piece is plot-driven, yet builds character, as it illuminates conflicts created by human encroachment into fire-prone areas. The piece offers both adventure and context. With skillful asides, Foster alludes well to some of the “backstories” of the American West: the frontier culture that persists among those who make their homes in the hinterland, the [...]
