Our latest Notable Narrative, the story of a mother convicted of killing her adopted son with salt, comes from Pamela Colloff of Texas Monthly. A two-time National Magazine Award finalist, Colloff has been at Texas Monthly since 1997, and her work has also appeared in The New Yorker and three editions of “Best American Crime [...]
Tag Archives: The New Yorker
Pamela Colloff on storytelling, justice and letting readers think for themselves
January 20, 2012 – 1:22 pm
“Why’s this so good?” No. 25: Nick Paumgarten’s tower of terror
December 20, 2011 – 11:48 am
A few days ago I stepped onto an elevator, heading out for an afternoon coffee. The repairman was there, his tools spread out on the floor. Come on in, he said, pressing the “door close” button and whistling a short tweet. Somewhere above us, a whistle back, and we started to move. Hey-yo! Someone shouted. [...]
Gay Talese has a Coke*: reflections of a narrative legend, in conversation with Esquire’s Chris Jones
December 2, 2011 – 2:08 pm
Continuing a Nieman Foundation narrative writing speaker series set up by Paige Williams, journalism legend Gay Talese appeared on campus two weeks ago in conversation with Esquire’s Chris Jones. The Harvard Writers at Work lecture series co-sponsored the standing-room-only event, where Talese and Jones were introduced by current Nieman fellow Adam Tanner of Reuters. What follows is [...]
Dexter Filkins on the case: murder in Pakistan
September 22, 2011 – 6:05 pm
Dexter Filkins is hardly the first person to use a crime and its procedural aftermath to tell a story of corruption – such tales have dotted the landscapes of film and fiction for most of a century. But in our latest Notable Narrative, “The Journalist and the Spies,” he probes the all-too-real murder of reporter Syed [...]
“Why’s this so good?” No. 8: Katherine Boo takes on the ties that bind
August 16, 2011 – 10:03 am
I only saw my great-aunt a few times – she lived far away – but in my family, she was kind of a legend. She wore purple every day, and kept a stash of matching purple toilet paper that she’d break out for company. She watched the Denver Broncos every Sunday with her old lady friends and yelled at the television [...]
“Why’s this so good?” No. 6:
Alma Guillermoprieto’s view on Bogota
August 3, 2011 – 11:58 am
I first read “Letter from Bogota” in a Latin American History class in college. About 50 kids were crammed into an old, long lecture hall, the kind you see in movies about blue bloods and their schools: the dark wood floors, the lead-paned windows and the reading nook tucked into the back wall – the one that’s [...]
A narrative sketch from George Packer’s “Interesting Times”
July 14, 2011 – 2:40 pm
In our latest Notable Narrative, “Iraqis Pass the Safety Test,” The New Yorker’s George Packer draws an arc through three apparently unrelated points by doing little more than setting up and repeating quotes from as many stories: The first centers on the father who recently fell to his death over the rail of a ballpark [...]
“Why’s this so good?” No. 2: McPhee takes on the Mississippi
July 7, 2011 – 2:11 pm
When the Mississippi River recently surged down through the middle of the country, a lot of people I follow on Twitter took the opportunity to point to John McPhee’s marvelous 1987 article “Atchafalaya.”I took their advice and revisited the piece.
After 24 years, the story is still valuable simply as a guide to the risks faced by [...]
“Why’s this so good?” No. 1: Truman Capote keeps time with Marlon Brando
June 27, 2011 – 10:11 am
Truman Capote’s profile of the depressive, incoherent, brilliant Marlon Brando is one of the greatest of all time. Published in 1957 in The New Yorker, it nominally takes place one evening in the Miyako Hotel in Kyoto.
One could point out many things about craft in the piece. The descriptions of characters are finely observed and [...]
