Archive
Writing once featured on the original Gangrey blog.
Ben's tweet last week about his latest story about the Dozier School for Boys was something I needed to hear. "This story is based on six years of reporting, the review of thousand…
Mark Johnson: Murray Blackmore stood at the lectern and tried to take in the dark conference room, the men and women in wheelchairs waiting for him to wrest a little hope from scie…
My dear friend Michael Kruse let it be known today that he's leaving the St. Pete Times to work for Politico. We're sad and happy, which exist on the same end of the emotional spec…
From Mark: Anyone else beaten down by this season of newspaper layoffs? I think I've heard enough crap about "right-sizing" and dying industries to last a lifetime. I'll admit it.…
Dear friends, if you can find it in your hearts, head over to Goodreads and cast a vote for 'Grandma Gatewood's Walk' in the readers' choice history and biography awards. I'm stoke…
Daniel Miller: It was hot and I was late for lunch. I was feeling mean, like I'd been left out in the sun too long. We were meeting at a joint on La Brea, the kind of place where t…
Brooke Jarvis: On the nights before a dive, Cindy Lee Van Dover likes to stand on the deck of her research ship, looking down into the water the way an astronaut might look up at t…
Michael Kruse: Earlier this fall, someone posted a question on reddit.com: Are there two fake schools operating on the periphery of college football? One was called the College of…
Weston Phippen: TAMPA — Addison Allen was 16, about to start her senior year at Tampa's Robinson High School, when the police called. They wanted to talk about the rumors. Several…
Stephanie McCrummen: HE WAKES UP, and even before he opens his eyes, he can see his beautiful, delusional son. Gus, Creigh Deeds thinks. He lies in bed a few minutes more, trying t…
From our pal down under, Konrad Marshall: The horizon here is a craggy ridge of open cut coal mine, the blue sky above and the Muswellbrook Race Club below. Magpies arc on the bree…
Maybe I'm missing out on some good ones, but I feel like I don't see a straight-up narrative news story that often lately? This one's from yesterday's shooting in my hometown. Laur…
I've been thinking about this a lot lately, as I see the stories being shared by contacts in social media circles. It's rare to see a piece of journalism make the rounds – recent e…
Joshua Hammer: Two years ago, when I began researching a piece for Outside about Moore's abduction, the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, which had given Moore a grant to report…
Driving back from our annual Georgia get-together this week, Kruse started talking about interviewing our friend and just-retired TB Times colleague Jeff Klinkenberg for a what-I'v…
Is anyone else listening to this? What do you think? If you haven't heard of it, it's by the same crew behind This American Life. In it, Sarah Koenig recounts her reporting on a 19…
Writing fro Oklahoma State's student newspaper, Kassie McClung: Ashley sits at a wooden table and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear with a sweaty palm. Her eyes shift nervously…
Leah Sottile: Two men in flat-billed hats and baggy t-shirts stand back-to-back on a dimly-lit stage. On cue, they bend at the waist, draw their e-cigarettes to their mouths. Wisps…
Part I, from Cary Aspinwall and Ziva Bransetter: Prosecutor Tim Harris stood before jurors deciding Michelle Murphy's fate and told them police found someone's blood near her slain…
Baxter Holmes: ON ALCATRAZ ISLAND, Calif. — John Hernan dug through memories from six decades back when he patrolled this rock as a correctional officer. And his 93-year-old blue e…
Dan Barry: EAST PROVIDENCE, R.I. — A Sunday wedding that was months away, then weeks away, then days away, is now hours away, and there is so much still to do. The bride is panicki…
Joan Garrett McClane: They came from across the city. They came black and white to the towering brick house on Read Street. Bankers, lawyers, judges, government workers, retirees,…
I'm always a sucker for a Wallace Stevens homage, and this one, from SB Nation Longform, is special: a heartbreaking memoir about two best friends and the 1995 World Series. Jeremy…
Charles Anderson in New Zealand: He awakes alone in the black at 12.03am. He does not look at the clock but he knows the time. He cannot see their faces but he knows who they are.…
It's been 10 years today since Montreal's beloved baseball team played its last game. Adam Gopnik attended every Expos home opener from the very first, in 1969, until he left for N…
Dinty W. Moore of Brevity Magazine, in The Review Review: I have a standard answer for folks who ask me, "Do you think I should be a writer?" Or "Do you think I can succeed as a wr…
Scott Atkinson: FLINT, MI — Ermina Hagerman could not have known she was sending her children to die. It was November 1885, and it was a desperate time. Her husband, Charles, had d…
Eva Holland has kindly accepted our invitation to guest curate the blog for a spell. I'm excited to brush aside the gangrey cobwebs and see what Eva has been reading. Stay tuned.
The Des Moines Register has a new piece up. It looks like a video game, informs like journalism. They partnered with all kinds of people to put this thing together, combining photo…
Rob Rogers: By the end, they had just eight pieces of bread and a half tank of gas left. It was Sunday night, Nov. 3, and Mark and Kristine Wathke, missing since Oct. 28, were sitt…
Our pal Tim Loh, who left papers in Connecticut for Bloomberg News, graciously passed along three enterprise stories from the outfit better known for its bread-and-butter business…
Lori Kurtzman: Paul F. once gave a gas station a five-star review for its hot dogs. He tore into a breakfast restaurant for charging him a quarter for jelly. He wrote of an enjoyab…
Lane DeGregory: He got the letter in July, at his mom's house in Seminole. She never would have believed it. Not after everything that had happened. Dakota Rockwell, 20, had applie…
Sports Illustrated is republishing it's 60 best stories. This one, from Rick Bragg, is the most recent: They say college football is religion in the Deep South, but it's not. Only…
Michael Mooney: Looking at herself in the tall, wide bridal-shop mirror, Amanda Barbour couldn't help but smile. This was what she'd dreamed of. The big, bright satin dress. The fl…
From Jeff Pearlman's interview with Peter Carry, former executive editor of SI: I don't mean to sound like the guy who bemoaned the demise of the buggy whip by decrying the advent…
This lede is a mouthful. Thoughts? Robert D. McFadden: Joan Rivers, the raspy loudmouth who pounced on America's obsessions with flab, face-lifts, body hair and other blemishes of…
Deanna Pan: You've probably seen her before. Captured in grainy 16mm Kodachrome color film, she walks upstream along a sandbar on the opposite edge of a creek. It's an easy gait, b…
Registration just opened for a new journalism conference at the Graduate School of Journalism, University of California, Berkeley.: With keynote addresses by essayist Adam Gopnik a…
Nigel Duara: Thirty-three minutes before sunrise one April morning, a man in black tactical gear slammed a battering ram through a cheap plywood door at a run-down Beaverton apartm…
Pamela Colloff: Early one morning in April, Michelle Lyons pulled up outside her daughter's elementary school in Huntsville, seventy miles north of Houston. Set deep in the Piney W…
Michael Kruse: The Tallahassee medical examiner unzipped the body bag. Here was an 18-year-old, muscular, black male. Here was an 18-year-old, muscular, black male with white sneak…
Bill Marvel's introduction from the 2014 edition of Ten Spurs. "Every journalist who is not too stupid or full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is mora…
Robert Samuels: Justin Green stands on the Anacostia Metro platform, ready to work. A belt stretches across his chest, holding 33 tiny bottles filled with colorful liquids. On his…
Alexandra Zavis: BOSSEMPTELE, Central African Republic — The militia fighters were hunting for Muslims when they found the father and son at their home in this mud-brick town. They…
Jessica Lipscomb: His first kiss happened long after sunset, illuminated by headlights and perfumed by exhaust fumes on a swath of land in Punta Gorda known as the Redneck Yacht Cl…
Dan Barry: ATALISSA, Iowa — The old schoolhouse on the hill had announced the farm town of Atalissa to the Iowa flatness for more than a century. But a couple of weeks ago, the pre…
Leah Sottile: When the kid backed up to the end of the street, a thousand pairs of eyes looked his way. Straddling his bike — a red, white and blue machine covered in stars and str…
Ashley Luthern: After only four months as a homicide detective, Rose Galindo thought she had the case. Every detective has at least one. The case that eats away at you, haunts you.…
Charlie Scudder: Flies landed on the beast's back as the cowboy got ready for his ride. He pulled a flank strap around the bull's backside and a bull rope with a leather handle aro…
Tony Rehagen: On any given workday, the stretch of Georgia 9 that cuts north-south through Roswell is a four-lane wall of cars. Almost as old as the city itself, the thoroughfare w…
Congrats, one and all. From The Mayborn: DENTON (UNT), Texas — For the second year in a row, an article in The Washington Post by reporter Eli Saslow received the first place award…
Joan Garrett McClane: Before the cancer, there was Christmastime. There was convincing her curly-headed 7-year-old son for one more year that Santa Claus existed. There was Amazon…
Marisa Gerber: A red truck pulls into an empty parking lot off Fairfax Avenue just before 6 a.m. René Portillo gets out in a rush and heads to a blue shoe box of a building wearing…
Lori Kurtzman: He remembers the blond hair, the bobbing head, the lifeless body they pulled from the chilly water that evening. Her dad cried from the banks of the Olentangy River:…
William Browning: This woman in ill-fitting, soiled clothes sat beside a shuttered gas station in front of Leigh Mall. I would pass by in the middle of the day and see her. Usually…
Eva Holland: I can still hear the quick crunch of his vertebrae cracking. That's the meddling of hindsight, of course — he was too far away, out in the middle of the night-dark fie…
Matthew Teague (thanks, Mark): Wildland fire chief Darrell Willis tore along the highway and turned on his truck's headlights to cut the smoke. Ash and embers rained down around hi…
Louis Hansen (thanks, JHD): NORFOLK Two visitors stretched the security chain on the motel door and peered through the crack. Inside, a man lay motionless on the floor. Stay back,…
Deanna Pan: JUNE 20, 1994 — This is how it all ends: Four gunshots as steady as a heartbeat. Pop, pop, pop, pop. The third hits Dean Mellberg in his left shoulder, just a superfici…
To help identify and train up-and-coming narrative writers under the age of 40, George Getschow and two of the Mayborn's literary agents, David Patterson and Jim Hornfischer, have…
Chris Jones: Gordy Gronkowski, the patriarch of those very same Gronkowskis, America's First Family of Smashmouth Football, the man who somehow parlayed five orgasms into 1,258 pou…
Krista Ramsey and Cara Owsley: Malik Nu'qman says the three things he values most in life are his brothers, his mother and his bike. His family, in part because they're the buffer…
Spirit magazine is on the hunt for hungry young writers (old and middle-aged also welcome) to breathe some life into our feature well. Think you've got the chops and ambition to cr…
Mike Hixenbaugh: A 91-year-old man lifts off in a commercial airliner bound for France and for a moment can imagine himself in the cabin of a Douglas C-47, preparing to leap into m…
Lane DeGregory: He didn't open the first email. He thought it was spam, some memorabilia about World War II. The subject line said: "USCG in Normandy." Kirk Vail, 60, is a plumber,…
Mike Wilson: Ethan Swan and I couldn't see the players' tattoos from Section 217 of the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, but Swan still knew who was inked and who wasn't. LeBron James?…
Leonora LaPeter Anton: The man with the ominous tattoos perched on a metal box in a dusty welding booth, sparks spraying on his jeans and white T-shirt as he ground down another mi…
Brian Mockenhaupt (thanks, Dan Stockman): Near the end of June, the weather patterns over Arizona shift. Wet air from Mexico flows in from the south, replacing the dry air that pus…
We're pleased as punch to present an excerpt from the first chapter of Earl Swift's latest, AUTO BIOGRAPHY: A Classic Car, an Outlaw Motorhead and 57 Years of the American Dream. B…
Chris Vogel: In the Northern reaches of China's Yunnan province, just before the rolling hills and deep, river-carved ravines of the Yungui Plateau give way to cascading sheets of…
Dan England: On an early April morning in 2014, jolts of heavy metal jarred the Spartan Race Gravel Pit north of Las Vegas, a boneyard of rock, grit and wind. As the first few bank…
Matt Sedensky: LOS ANGELES — Jay Westbrook's cowboy boot is planted firmly on the gas pedal of his shiny black pickup. Everywhere he turns, a memory flashes. In Van Nuys, it is the…
Kevin Koczwara: Jimmy Bonneau was 17 years old when he threw his first punch. It was his first fight and it was with a teammate on the ice. It was the biggest beating he's ever han…
Police are trying to determine who shot a calf, took the meat and left the carcass behind. The Janesville Gazette reported that the calf, weighing about 400 pounds, was shot with a…
Did you read Roy Peter Clark in The Chronicle of Higher Education? The stories we read live on within us, shaping our psyches. Click.
Brian Haas: CROSSVILLE, Tenn. — Paul Gregory House says "Oh, well" a lot. His mother says it's a quirk of his damaged brain. A sort of sigh, a mental reset, when his thoughts don't…
Ben Montgomery, on a little thing that became a big thing. Janet Feldman did not need four dozen rotisserie chickens. Who among us does? But the 57-year-old Davie woman who makes o…
Read this, from Lisa Falkenberg, part of her Pulitzer finalist entry in commentary: Just after 7 a.m., my father is sitting in the dining room, already dressed in his blue-collared…
Not sure how this eluded me so long, but read up. Billy Baker: The first time I saw Robbie Concannon's penis was in the early '90s at a party on the top floor of a triple-decker in…
So happy to see so many FOGs winning and being nominated for Pulitzers. Congrats, one and all.
Mailbag: The 2013 Best American Newspaper Narrative Writing Contest is accepting entries. The deadline is May 1. The contest, co-sponsored by the Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Confer…
The Washington Post April 08, 1996 Toilets, Plumbed By Henry Allen Washington Post Staff Writer Toilets will never be great art, not even the expensive ones that look like art m…
Check out the first chapter of Running the River: Secrets of the Sabine, from the fine Texas writer Wes Ferguson: A man shot at us our first day on the river. Of course he did. You…
The Cleveland Plain Dealer, Sunday, October 9, 1966 by John De Groot RAVENNA (AP)–In his world of loneliness and twisted nightmares, Dale Spaur wonders if the nightmare will ever…
Rebecca Catalanello and Kathleen Flynn: She hobbled down the jetway carrying a suitcase, a pillow, a teddy bear for good luck. At the plane's entrance she stopped, paralyzed by dre…
Chris Ballard: "You want a story?" my brother said. "You should write about the Streak." This was last year, over a beer. My brother is 41 now, a successful doctor with two kids. A…
Michael Graff: He's sitting on his couch, shirtless, hunched over a hard-earned belly, breathing hard-earned air, in and out, trying to remember. His face droops, and his right sid…
Ethan Brown in Playboy (NSFW, probably): When Lil Reese tells you to get out of the car, you exit the vehicle as fast as you can. The tension began to boil at breakfast when Brando…
Dan Zak: The scent on the breeze is — what? Guava, with a hint of lion's mane? Or maybe a cocktail of vanilla and cherry menthol and jungle juice. Past the hotel lobby, the haze th…
Fascinating stuff from Paul Coover: Hey Ben, I was recently reading through some old Ernie Pyle stories because A) I graduated from a journalism school that bears his name on its m…
Read. For 1/1/00, I assigned Henry Allen to summarize the millennium in poetry. Here's the brilliant result. http://t.co/rN4etlUwxj — Gene Weingarten (@geneweingarten) March 19, 20…
Life's Small Moments Loom Large. From the WSJ (thanks TLoh): As night fell last Friday in Kuala Lumpur, businessman Philip Wood hurried to gather his bags for a trip to Beijing. He…
From Mayborn and the Dallas Morning News: In an effort to foster narrative nonfiction storytelling at newspapers across America, The Dallas Morning News is sponsoring the second an…
Justin Heckert: I heard that the clown would never say a word. That he barely ever spoke, even to friends. That he chose to communicate through song, and all of his songs were sad.…
Rod Norland (thanks, Mark): BAMIAN, Afghanistan — She is his Juliet and he is her Romeo, and her family has threatened to kill them both. Zakia is 18 and Mohammad Ali is 21, both t…
Dan Barry: WATERLOO, Iowa — A man stands at a bus stop. He wears bluejeans, cowboy boots, and a name tag pinned like a badge to his red shirt. It says: Clayton Berg, dishwasher, co…
This fun thing – The Tom Waits Map – making the rounds among my friends got me thinking about place. In most of the daily stories I write, I don't pay much attention to where somet…
Tommy Tomlinson: CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Dean Smith doesn't watch the games anymore. The motion on the screen is too hard to follow. Now he thumbs through golf magazines and picture bo…
Missed this when it first came out, but I'm impressed so far. Jackie Valley: In an older, one-story home at 1016 Robin St. lives a family of five — six if you count the puppy. They…
Jonah Ogles: The cinder-block school has no windows and no doors, just a string of incandescent lightbulbs hanging down the center of the ceiling like the spine of a great whale. I…
Congrats to Mark Johnson and the I-team at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for winning the 2014 Selden Ring Award for investigative journalism. Read the series: Deadly Delays.
Our friend Neil Swidey's book is out today. The praise has been great. Order yours.
Angelo B. Henderson, a Detroit journalist and radio talk show host, died Saturday. He won a Pulitzer in 1999, when he was at the Wall Street Journal, in the feature writing categor…
Lane DeGregory: TRINITY — In the passenger seat of his mom's SUV, Austin Erickson sits silently, clutching his wallet, watching as his subdivision slides by. "So Publix?" asks his…
Lewisville (Texas) high-schooler Katelyn Hoagland: The dreams started in eighth grade, the year when I sang in the choir and performed in theater. And the year when Logan, the I'm-…
John H. Tucker (thanks, Barry): Here is the friend. Arms cradling the boy he has known since fifth grade. The boy, 17, is on the ground, foaming at the mouth. Moaning, twitching, t…
A few well-distilled thoughts from our colleague Russ Rymer: It would be encouraging to think, as Jonathan Mahler contends in "When 'Long-Form' Is Bad Form" (Op-Ed, Jan. 25), that…
Kevin Hardy: LAFOLLETTE, Tenn. — This place doesn't look like much. The brick exterior is falling away. The homemade sign standing by the dead-end gravel road is written in crooked…
Todd C. Frankel (Thanks, Mark): CAPE GIRARDEAU, MO. His ex-wife gave him $25 for gas. She didn't need to. But she did. Somehow he had to get to court tomorrow. His borrowed Jeep wa…
Don't miss this Bronx Banter interview with the great Pete Dexter: (Thanks to Oliver.) Bronx Banter: What kind of reporter were you when you began? Pete Dexter: I didn't have a spe…
Zac Crain: It was January 3, 1983, the last day of the NFL's strike-shortened season, and Tony Dorsett's Dallas Cowboys were losing to the Minnesota Vikings on Monday Night Footbal…
Michael Kruse: Gated, guarded Wingfield North, outside Orlando in Longwood, is a collection of about a hundred houses with pillars and pools and new BMWs parked out front. Golden e…
Marisa Kwiatkowski: A woman and three children who claimed to be possessed by demons. A 9-year-old boy walking backward up a wall in the presence of a family case manager and hospi…
Sonia Smith: Andy and Patty Grove never planned to settle outside of Texas. Their roots in the state reach back many generations. Patty's ancestors came to Texas on a wagon train f…
Huh? It wasn't so many years ago that people assumed the Internet would make long magazine-style stories obsolete. Paradoxically, it now seems to have revived this once threatened…
Charles Bethea: "What's happenin', my friend?" Vernon Keenan is saying hello to a large, shy-looking man named John Gibson in the Georgia Bureau of Investigation's main elevator, a…
So. Caleb Hannan: Strange stories can find you at strange times. Like when you're battling insomnia and looking for tips on your short game. It was well past midnight sometime last…
You have to read S.L. Price on Richard Ben Cramer's unfinished work. It'll get you fired up. Time now to speak of writers. We are, most of us, a particularly cramped breed, gunning…
Easily worth your $3.99. Barry Yeoman: He stood at the kitchen window waiting. He had memorized everything around him: the pine walls, bare of wallpaper or even paint; the wardrobe…
Robert Samuels: It only took a phone call in 2005 to persuade then-D.C. Council member Vincent C. Gray to push for the inclusion of the Lincoln Heights housing project and the surr…
From Mark Johnson: Last night, I wound up reading this 18-year-old Washington Post Story about the death of George McGovern's daughter. It's terrific. It got me trying to think whe…
Thomas Curwen: Frost glistens on the meadow grass. The sun has yet to crest Church Creek Divide, and on his last day in the cabin, Jack English isn't about to break from routine. H…
Amy Harmon: KONA, Hawaii — From the moment the bill to ban genetically engineered crops on the island of Hawaii was introduced in May 2013, it garnered more vocal support than any…