“One Desperate Night” by Neil Swidey in The Boston Globe Magazine (via LongForm.org)

After nearly half an hour, they managed to get Rodley back to the car door. But as they attempted to guide him into the Acura, he suddenly pushed Vino aside and bounded toward the railing, hurling himself over it and into the darkness of the Charles River below. Put yourself in this horror for a minute. Despite your best efforts, your closest friend has just jumped off a bridge, right before your eyes. What do you do? Call 911? Scream into the night for help? Collapse in a heap of despair?

Here’s what Vino did. In his waterlogged green sneakers, and without a moment’s pause, he bounded toward that railing, hurling himself over it and into the darkness of the Charles River below.

“Are You Sure You Want to Quit the World?” by Nadya Labi in GQ (via @alexismadrigal)

If you were desperate and hopeless enough to log on to a suicide chat room in recent years, there was a good chance a mysterious woman named Li Dao would find you, befriend you, and gently urge you to take your own life. And, she’d promise, she would join you in that final journey. But then the bodies started adding up, and the promises didn’t. Turned out, Li Dao was something even more sinister than anyone thought.

“Innocence Lost” by Pamela Colloff in Texas Monthly (via Paige Williams).

Since August 23, 1992, Anthony Graves has been behind bars for the gruesome murder of a family in Somerville. There was no clear motive, no physical evidence connecting him to the crime, and the only witness against him recanted, declaring again and again before his death, in 2000, that Graves didn’t do it. If he didn’t, the truth will come out. Won’t it?

“Autism’s First Child” by Jon Donvan and Caren Zucker in The Atlantic.

As new cases of autism have exploded in recent years—some form of the condition affects about one in 110 children today—efforts have multiplied to understand and accommodate the condition in childhood. But children with autism will become adults with autism, some 500,000 of them in this decade alone. What then? Meet Donald Gray Triplett, 77, of Forest, Mississippi. He was the first person ever diagnosed with autism. And his long, happy, surprising life may hold some answers.

“Diary” by Hilary Mantel in the London Review of Books (via Arts and Letters Daily).

Three or four nights after surgery – when, in the words of the staff, I have ‘mobilised’ – I come out of the bathroom and spot a circus strongman squatting on my bed. He sees me too; from beneath his shaggy brow he rolls a liquid eye. Brown-skinned, naked except for the tattered hide of some endangered species, he is bouncing on his heels and smoking furiously without taking the cigarette from his lips: puff, bounce, puff, bounce. What rubbish, I think, actually shouting at myself, but silently. This is a no-smoking hospital.

“Disneyland with the Death Penalty” by William Gibson in Wired (via Give Me Something To Read).

The sensation of trying to connect psychically with the old Singapore is rather painful, as though Disneyland’s New Orleans Square had been erected on the site of the actual French Quarter, obliterating it in the process but leaving in its place a glassy simulacrum. The facades of the remaining Victorian shop-houses recall Covent Garden on some impossibly bright London day. I took several solitary, jet-lagged walks at dawn, when a city’s ghosts tend to be most visible, but there was very little to be seen of previous realities: Joss stick smouldering in an old brass holder on the white-painted column of a shop-house; a mirror positioned above the door of a supplier of electrical goods, set to snare and deflect the evil that travels in a straight line; a rusty trishaw, chained to a freshly painted iron railing. The physical past, here, has almost entirely vanished.

So what’s it like? Workshop coach Neil Swidey (whose day job is with The Boston Globe Magazine) describes looking at submitted stories in a supportive but intensive setting:

“There were late nights spent talking about war stories and the stories people had brought with them, conversations continuing through breakfast. It was great to have a focus, something concrete that [participants] were working on. We were actually talking about not just ideas but how to make their stories better.”

Swidey is returning for a second year at the workshop. The roster of other coaches for this year includes Lee Hill Kavanaugh of The Kansas City Star, along with Ben Montgomery and Michael Kruse of the St. Petersburg Times, among others.

Who was Mike Levine? He served as a reporter, columnist, then executive editor at the The Times Herald-Record in Middletown, N.Y. Levine died in 2007 at age 54. For a more detailed history, you can read Gregory Favre’s tribute post on Poynter.org or visit the webpage maintained in his memory by The Times-Herald Record.

The workshop is open to working journalists who have between 3 and 12 years of experience (though there is some flexibility in the guidelines). Asked if attendance were limited to print journalists, spokesperson Barbara Gref sent a note saying, “We are open to any kind of media. We’re of the mind that the story should be told in whatever media does it best.”

Gref and all the workshop coaches volunteer their time, in the interest of promoting quality journalism and remembering Levine. According to Swidey, “Those of us who lived and worked with Mike Levine know that he was a guy who helped spot the flight of young writers so that they could reach greater heights. This workshop is for people who think they can fly and want some help getting airborne.”

For more information on the experience, check out Michael Kruse’s blog from last year’s sessions and Ben Montgomery’s December call for entries on Gangrey.com. The deadline for applications is February 7, and the workshop site says limited funding is available for travel scholarships. Apply here.