Tweets Against The "Tipping Point" 6 Aug 2013 | 06:20 pm

27m Just on a radio show w/ some smart liberal (not left) activists. They kept talking about the "tipping point" toward Dem victories. #tipsy Thing is, "tipping points" aren't actuall *things.* It's...

picture 3 Jul 2013 | 12:27 am

picture 2 Jul 2013 | 09:24 am

Michael Hastings, An Honest Reporter, 1980-2013 19 Jun 2013 | 09:22 am

Tonight comes the terrible, terrible news of the death of Michael Hastings, 33, one of those incredibly rare investigative journalists gifted with anger, honesty, and the courage to genuinely challeng...

Help Me Teach James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men 15 May 2013 | 08:09 pm

I'm teaching James Agee's and Walker Evans' Let Us Now Praise Famous Men to my undergraduate students in my "intermediate" literary journalism class at Dartmouth College tomorrow. My problem: Too many...

Fetishizing Dialogue 13 May 2013 | 10:09 pm

I'm interested in the way the rough shape of an essay can emerge from a set of tweets. Here's one from this morning prompted by a Harvard Crimson editorial criticizing anti-rape and anti-hate protests...

Sally Tweets; or, Beating the Essay 14 Apr 2013 | 10:24 pm

Essay: A loose sally of the mind. --From Samuel Johnson's Dictionary, as quoted too often. From a real review of a real book: "Traces the story of a relationship--or does it? For X, ambiguity is the ...

I teach, students decide 1 Apr 2013 | 05:03 am

This anonymous student evaluation, essentially comparing me to a hallucinogen, is probably the best review I'll ever  receive: You will find yourself at the end of the term, lying in bed, delirious f...

Literary Journalism on Women at Work: A Too-Short List 18 Mar 2013 | 06:02 am

Today I'm looking for literary journalism, or creative nonfiction, or lyric essays -- or mutant journalism -- on women at work. I'd like to add some of these pieces to a syllabus for a creative nonfic...

Take Care of Your Teeth, Catherine Treyz, 2013 4 Mar 2013 | 05:40 am

Every now and then a writing student delivers a paragraph so so simple but rich that it could be a short story unto itself. All the more remarkable given that my students are studying the nonfiction g...