This week is women’s week on Storyboard. We spotlight wonderful writers like Katherine Boo, Sarah Lyall, Harper Lee and Elizabeth Bowen. But get this — all the writers of the posts are women too. Kind of cool, no? This theme … Read more
Whoever said “It is better to travel than to arrive” wasn’t sitting next to Sarah Lyall aboard American Airlines Flight 1886 en route from Iowa to Arizona at the moment she tried to open her single serving of yogurt. Read more
Why is it great? I love how Lee has written this line: It tumbles out of Scout’s head exactly like the thoughts of a 6-year-old child, all “this and this and this and especially this.” And it also captures the joys … Read more
When I first came across Katherine Boo’s work in journalism school, I was immediately taken with her ability to expose injustice while weaving gorgeous narratives. I carved up her stories in The Washington Post and The New Yorker with a … Read more
This week, identity is the theme that courses through the posts. Writer Steve Oney talks about masculinity and the creation of identity as an act of will. In South Africa, the women of the District Six neighborhood try to recapture … Read more
Marion Abrahams-Welsh grew up with four generations of her family on hilly Sheppard Street in the Cape Town neighborhood known as District Six. Fourteen of them shared a small home filled with love and possibility, even though they had little … Read more
Why is it great? Yes, it’s more than one sentence. But in this one short stanza, Cramer has captured all the rage and sorrow and loneliness and drive of the legendary Red Sox hitter Ted Williams. This is one of … Read more
In today’s America, the word “masculinity” is almost a Rorschach test. When you look at it, do you see a patrimony that is raging, raging against the dying of the light? Or do you see an assault on the concept … Read more
A feeling of loyalty and loss runs through this week’s posts. In Iraq, a local SWAT team tries to avenge their families — and save their city. In a Bruce Springsteen song, a highway patrolman with a brother on the … Read more
It was a tragic wreck, and dramatic, in a rural Maine way. A Toyota Corolla collided with a milk truck. Milk spilled across the interstate. A man was dead. From this bit of news from January, Portland Press Herald journalist … Read more