literary journalism assignment

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Literary Journalism

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Literary journalism is another essay form that is best reserved for intermediate and advanced level courses, but it can be incorporated into introductory and composition courses. Literary journalism is the creative nonfiction form that comes closest to newspaper and magazine writing. It is fact-driven and requires research and, often, interviews.

Literary journalism is sometimes called “immersion journalism” because it requires a closer, more active relationship to the subject and to the people the literary journalist is exploring. Like journalistic writing, the literary journalism piece should be well-researched, focus on a brief period of time, and concentrate on what is happening outside of the writer’s small circle of personal experience and feelings.

An Example and Discussion of a Literary Journalism

The following excerpt from George Orwell is a good example of literary journalism. Orwell wrote about the colonial regime in Marrakech. His father was a colonial officer, so Orwell was confronted with the reality of empire from an early age, and that experience is reflected in his literary journalism piece, Marrakech :

Orwell isn’t writing a reflective, personal essay about his travels through Marrakech. Neither is he writing a memoir about what it was like to be the son of a colonial officer, nor how that experience shaped his adult life. He writes in a descriptive way about the Jewish quarters in Marrakech, about the invisibility of the “natives,” and about the way citizenship doesn’t ensure equality under a colonial regime.

Generating Ideas for Literary Journalism

One way to incorporate literary journalism into an introductory or intermediate level course is simply to have students write personal essays first. Then the students can go back and research the facts behind the personal experiences related in their essays. They can incorporate historical data, interviews, or broaden the range of their personal essay by exploring the cultural or political issues hinted at in their personal essays.

If a student writes, in passing, about the first presidential candidate they were eligible to vote for, then they can include facts and figures around that particular election, as well as research other events that were current at that time, for example. As with other essay forms, students should find topics that are important to them.

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What is Literary Journalism: a Guide with Examples

Literary journalism is a genre created with the help of a reporter’s inner voice and employing a writing style based on literary techniques. The journalists working in the genre of literary journalism must be able to use the whole literary arsenal: epithets, impersonations, comparisons, allegories, etc. Thus, literary journalism is similar to fiction. At the same time, it remains journalism , which is the opposite of fiction as it tells a true story. The journalist’s task here is not only to inform us about specific events but also to affect our feelings (mainly aesthetic ones) and explore the details that ordinary journalism overlooks.

Characteristics of literary journalism

Modern journalism is constantly changing, but not all changes are good for it (take fake news proliferating thanks to social media , for instance). Contemporary literary journalism differs from its historic predecessor in the following:

• Literary journalism almost completely lost its unity with literature
• Journalists have stopped relying on the literary features of the language and style
• There are fewer and fewer articles in the genre of literary journalism in modern editions
• Contemporary media has lost the need in literary journalism
• The habits of media consumers today are not sophisticated enough for a revival of literary journalism

The most prominent works of literary journalism

With all this, it’s no surprise that we need to go back in time to find worthy examples of literary journalism. Fortunately, it wasn’t until the 1970-s that literary journalism came to an end, so here are 4 great works of the genre that are worth every minute of your attention.

Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad (1869)

Mark Twain studied journalism from the age of 12 and until the end of his life. It brought him his first glory and a pseudonym and made him a writer. In 1867, Twain (as a correspondent of the newspaper Daily Alta California , San Francisco) went on a sea voyage to Europe, the Middle East, and Egypt. His reports and travel records turned into the book The Innocents Abroad , which made him famous all over the world.

In some sense, American journalism came out of letters that served as an important source of information about life in the colonies. The newspaper has long been characterized by an epistolary subjectivity, and Twain’s book recalls the times when no one thought that neutrality would one day become one of the hallmarks of the “right” journalism.

Of course, Twain’s travel around the Old World was a journey not only through geography but also through the history that Twain resolutely refused to worship. Sometimes it’s funny, sometimes not too much, but the more valuable are the lyrical and sublime notes that sound when Twain-the-narrator is truly captivated by something.

John Hersey, Hiroshima (1946)

John Hersey was a war correspondent and a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his debut story A Bell for Adano . As a reporter of The New Yorker , he was one of the first journalists from the USA who came to Hiroshima to describe the consequences of the atomic bombing.

Starting with where two doctors, two priests, a seamstress, and a plant employee were and what they were doing at exactly 08:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945, when the bomb exploded over Hiroshima, Hersey describes the year they lived after that. Hersey’s uniform and detached tone seems to be the only appropriate medium in relation to what one would call indescribable and inexpressible. Without allowing himself sentimentality, admiring horrors, or obvious partiality, he doesn’t miss any of the details that add up to a horrible and magnificent picture.

Hiroshima became a sensation due to the formidable brevity of the author’s prose, which tried to give the reader the most explicit (and the most complete) idea of what happened for the first time in mankind’s history

Truman Capote, “In Cold Blood” (1965)

Truman Capote turned to journalism as a young writer looking for a new form of self-expression. He read an article about the murder of the family of a farmer Herbert Clutter in Holcomb City (Kansas) in the newspaper and went there to collect the material. His original idea was to write about how a brutal murder influenced the life of the quiet backwoods. The killers were caught, and Capote decided to use their confessions in his book. He finished it only after the killers were hanged. This way, the six-year story got the finale.

In Cold Blood was published in “The New Yorker” in 1965. Next year it was released as a book that became the benchmark of true crime and a super bestseller. “In Cold Blood” includes:

• A stylistic brilliance.
• Inexorable footsteps of doom destroying both innocent and guilty.
• The horror hidden in a person and waiting for a chance to break out.

Tom Wolfe, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968)

Tomas Wolfe is one of the key figures of literary journalism. Mainly due to his creative and, so to speak, production efforts, “the new journalism” became an essential part of American culture and drew close attention (both critical and academic).

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test became one of the hallmarks of this type of journalism with its focus on aesthetic expressiveness (along with documentary authenticity). This is a story about the writer Ken Kesey and his friends and associates’ community, “Merry Pranksters”, who spread the idea of the benefits of expanding consciousness.

Wolfe decided to plunge into the “subjective reality” of the characters and their adventures. To convey them to the reader, he had to “squeeze” the English language: Wolfe changes prose to poetry , dives into the stream of consciousness, and mocks the traditional punctuation. In general, he does just about everything to make a crazy carnival come to life on the pages of his book (without actually participating in it). Compare that with gonzo journalism by Hunter S. Thompson , the author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas which draws upon some similar themes.

The book’s main part is devoted to the journey of the “pranksters” on a psychedelic propaganda bus and the “acid tests” themselves, which were actually parties where a lot of people took LSD. Wolfe had to use different sources of information to reconstruct these events, and it’s hard to believe that he didn’t experience any of them himself. Yet, no matter how bright his book shines and how much freedom it shows, Wolfe makes it clear that he’s talking about a doomed project and an ending era.

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What Is Literary Journalism?

Carl T. Gossett Jr / Getty Images

• An Introduction to Punctuation
• Ph.D., Rhetoric and English, University of Georgia
• M.A., Modern English and American Literature, University of Leicester
• B.A., English, State University of New York

Literary journalism is a form of nonfiction that combines factual reporting with narrative techniques and stylistic strategies traditionally associated with fiction. This form of writing can also be called  narrative journalism or new journalism . The term literary journalism is sometimes used interchangeably with creative nonfiction ; more often, however, it is regarded as one type of creative nonfiction.

In his ground-breaking anthology The Literary Journalists , Norman Sims observed that literary journalism "demands immersion in complex, difficult subjects. The voice of the writer surfaces to show that an author is at work."

Highly regarded literary journalists in the U.S. today include John McPhee , Jane Kramer, Mark Singer, and Richard Rhodes. Some notable literary journalists of the past include Stephen Crane, Henry Mayhew , Jack London , George Orwell , and Tom Wolfe.

Characteristics of Literary Journalism

There is not exactly a concrete formula that writers use to craft literary journalism, as there is for other genres, but according to Sims, a few somewhat flexible rules and common features define literary journalism. "Among the shared characteristics of literary journalism are immersion reporting, complicated structures, character development, symbolism , voice , a focus on ordinary people ... and accuracy.

"Literary journalists recognize the need for a consciousness on the page through which the objects in view are filtered. A list of characteristics can be an easier way to define literary journalism than a formal definition or a set of rules. Well, there are some rules, but Mark Kramer used the term 'breakable rules' in an anthology we edited. Among those rules, Kramer included:

• Literary journalists immerse themselves in subjects' worlds...
• Literary journalists work out implicit covenants about accuracy and candor...
• Literary journalists write mostly about routine events.
• Literary journalists develop meaning by building upon the readers' sequential reactions.

... Journalism ties itself to the actual, the confirmed, that which is not simply imagined. ... Literary journalists have adhered to the rules of accuracy—or mostly so—precisely because their work cannot be labeled as journalism if details and characters are imaginary." 

Why Literary Journalism Is Not Fiction or Journalism

The term "literary journalism" suggests ties to fiction and journalism, but according to Jan Whitt, literary journalism does not fit neatly into any other category of writing. "Literary journalism is not fiction—the people are real and the events occurred—nor is it journalism in a traditional sense.

"There is interpretation, a personal point of view, and (often) experimentation with structure and chronology. Another essential element of literary journalism is its focus. Rather than emphasizing institutions, literary journalism explores the lives of those who are affected by those institutions."

The Role of the Reader

Because creative nonfiction is so nuanced, the burden of interpreting literary journalism falls on readers. John McPhee, quoted by Sims in "The Art of Literary Journalism," elaborates: "Through dialogue , words, the presentation of the scene, you can turn over the material to the reader. The reader is ninety-some percent of what's creative in creative writing. A writer simply gets things started."

Literary Journalism and the Truth

Literary journalists face a complicated challenge. They must deliver facts and comment on current events in ways that speak to much larger big picture truths about culture, politics, and other major facets of life; literary journalists are, if anything, more tied to authenticity than other journalists. Literary journalism exists for a reason: to start conversations.

Literary Journalism as Nonfiction Prose

Rose Wilder talks about literary journalism as nonfiction prose—informational writing that flows and develops organically like a story—and the strategies that effective writers of this genre employ in The Rediscovered Writings of Rose Wilder Lane, Literary journalist. "As defined by Thomas B. Connery, literary journalism is 'nonfiction printed prose whose verifiable content is shaped and transformed into a story or sketch by use of narrative and rhetorical  techniques generally associated with fiction.'

"Through these stories and sketches, authors 'make a statement, or provide an interpretation, about the people and culture depicted.' Norman Sims adds to this definition by suggesting the genre  itself allows readers to 'behold others' lives, often set within far clearer contexts than we can bring to our own.'

"He goes on to suggest, 'There is something intrinsically political—and strongly democratic—about literary journalism—something pluralistic, pro-individual, anti-cant, and anti-elite.' Further, as John E. Hartsock points out, the bulk of work that has been considered literary journalism is composed 'largely by professional journalists or those writers whose industrial means of production is to be found in the newspaper and magazine press, thus making them at least for the interim de facto journalists.'"

She concludes, "Common to many definitions of literary journalism is that the work itself should contain some kind of higher truth; the stories themselves may be said to be emblematic of a larger truth."

Background of Literary Journalism

This distinct version of journalism owes its beginnings to the likes of Benjamin Franklin, William Hazlitt, Joseph Pulitzer, and others. "[Benjamin] Franklin's Silence Dogood essays marked his entrance into literary journalism," begins Carla Mulford. "Silence, the persona Franklin adopted, speaks to the form that literary journalism should take—that it should be situated in the ordinary world—even though her background was not typically found in newspaper writing." 

Literary journalism as it is now was decades in the making, and it is very much intertwined with the New Journalism movement of the late 20th century. Arthur Krystal speaks to the critical role that essayist William Hazlitt played in refining the genre: "A hundred and fifty years before the New Journalists of the 1960s rubbed our noses in their egos, [William] Hazlitt put himself into his work with a candor that would have been unthinkable a few generations earlier."

Robert Boynton clarifies the relationship between literary journalism and new journalism, two terms that were once separate but are now often used interchangeably. "The phrase 'New Journalism' first appeared in an American context in the 1880s when it was used to describe the blend of sensationalism and crusading journalism—muckraking on behalf of immigrants and the poor—one found in the New York World and other papers... Although it was historically unrelated to [Joseph] Pulitzer's New Journalism, the genre of writing that Lincoln Steffens called 'literary journalism' shared many of its goals."

Boynton goes on to compare literary journalism with editorial policy. "As the city editor of the New York Commercial Advertiser in the 1890s, Steffens made literary journalism—artfully told narrative stories about subjects of concern to the masses—into editorial policy, insisting that the basic goals of the artist and the journalist (subjectivity, honesty, empathy) were the same."

• Boynton, Robert S. The New New Journalism: Conversations with America's Best Nonfiction Writers on Their Craft . Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2007.
• Krystal, Arthur. "Slang-Whanger." The New Yorker, 11 May 2009.
• Lane, Rose Wilder.  The Rediscovered Writings of Rose Wilder Lane, Literary Journalist . Edited by Amy Mattson Lauters, University of Missouri Press, 2007.
• Mulford, Carla. “Benjamin Franklin and Transatlantic Literary Journalism.”  Transatlantic Literary Studies, 1660-1830 , edited by Eve Tavor Bannet and Susan Manning, Cambridge University Press, 2012, pp. 75–90.
• Sims, Norman. True Stories: A Century of Literary Journalism . 1st ed., Northwestern University Press, 2008.
• Sims, Norman. “The Art of Literary Journalism.”  Literary Journalism , edited by Norman Sims and Mark Kramer, Ballantine Books, 1995.
• Sims, Norman. The Literary Journalists . Ballantine Books, 1984.
• Whitt, Jan. Women in American Journalism: A New History . University of Illinois Press, 2008.
• An Introduction to Literary Nonfiction
• Creative Nonfiction
• John McPhee: His Life and Work
• Defining Nonfiction Writing
• Genres in Literature
• literary present (verbs)
• Third-Person Point of View
• Tips on Great Writing: Setting the Scene
• What Is a Synopsis and How Do You Write One?
• A Guide to All Types of Narration, With Examples
• The Essay: History and Definition
• A Look at the Roles Characters Play in Literature
• What Is a Novel? Definition and Characteristics
• Point of View in Grammar and Composition

Literary Journalism I

Learn the basics of nonfiction writing — which offers rich, detailed, and vivid portraits of real events — as you read the best examples of the genre, and begin your own works.

What you can learn.

• Define what literary journalism is and how it differs from standard reportage
• Read examples from contemporary masters like Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion, and Gay Talese
• Develop skills of strong fiction writing to apply to writing about true events
• Start your own literary journalism project and get input from peers and the instructor

About this course:

Summer 2024 schedule.

Enrollment limited to 15 students; early enrollment advised. Visitors not permitted. Internet access required.

This online course is conducted through Canvas, a secure website that allows students to log in to access lectures, discussions, and other course materials on demand. There are no required live class meetings. Each course is structured with weekly assignments and deadlines. Lectures and coursework are accessible throughout the week. Workshops are conducted in writing via discussion boards with your instructor and classmates.

Internet access required to retrieve course materials.

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Resources & Links

Literary journalism educators seek to teach today’s students to a) understand and appreciate literary journalism and b) create literary journalism of their own. Below are syllabi, specific assignments, and practical strategies recommended by teachers of this form. If you have a syllabus, assignment, or strategy you would be willing to contribute, please send it to Mitzi Lewis at [email protected] .

• Reading Narrative Journalism (Christopher P. Wilson)
• Advanced Feature Writing (David Hayes)
• Advanced Magazine Writing (Kathleen Webber)
• Journalism as Literature (Ronald R. Rodgers)
• Journalism Studies: Through the Lens of Literary Journalism (Ronald R. Rodgers)
• Literary Journalism (Matt Tullis)
• Magazine Writing – Advanced Media (Carol Holstead)
• Media Narrative Project (Michael A. Longinow)
• Narrative Non-Fiction Workshop (David Swick)
• Redação Jornalística II (Leandro Ramires Comassetto)
• True Stories: The Convergence of Literature and Journalism (Laurence Roy Stains)

Syllabi With Assignments

• Narrative (Bill Reynolds)
• Exercise Scene: Joe & Rebecca Go to Banff (Bill Reynolds)
• Literary Journalism (John M.L. Drew)
• Literary Journalism Anthology and Reading List (John M.L. Drew)
• Non-Fiction Narrative, Structure: How Good Books Are Built (Michael Norman)
• Non-Fiction Narrative, Structure: How Good Books Are Built – Presenters Protocols (Michael Norman)
• Non-Fiction Narrative, Structure: How Good Books Are Built – Lessons Learned Sample Paper and Guide (Michael Norman)
• Taller de Periodismo Interpretativo (Karim Gálvez)
• Taller de Periodismo Interpretativo – Instrucciones Segundo Certamen (Karim Gálvez)
• Taller de Periodismo Interpretativo – Calendarización (Karim Gálvez)

Assignments

• Literary Journalism Skill Analysis (Pamela Fisher)
• IALJS-14 Literary Journalism 101: Teaching Toolkit Panel – Successful Assignments (Spring 2019 Survey Responses)
• What Do We Mean by “The Story” (Christopher Wilson)
• Texts & Contexts: Literary Journalism Across Cultures (Isabelle Meuret)
• Literature and Social Change (Martha Nandorfy)

As an academic discipline, just as a writing form, literary journalism has been growing exponentially in interest throughout the world. Here are some external sites where you can find literary journalism taught, practiced, and researched.

Learned Societies

European Society for Periodical Research http://www.ru.nl/esprit

Research Society for American Periodicals http://home.earthlink.net/~ellengarvey/index1.html

Academia Brasileira de Jornalismo Literário (Brazilian Academy of Literary Journalism) http://www.textovivo.com.br/

Brazilian Association for Journalism Research http://sbpjor.kamotini.kinghost.net/sbpjor/

International Society for the Study of Narrative http://narrative.georgetown.edu/

University of California, Irvine Literary Journalism Program http://www.humanities.uci.edu/litjourn/

Goucher College MFA in Creative Nonfiction Program http://www.goucher.edu/mfa

Autonomous University of Barcelona MA in Communication, Journalism, and Humanities (Literary Journalism) http://pagines.uab.cat/mecoph/

The Banff Centre, Alberta, Canada http://www.banffcentre.ca/programs/program.aspx?id=1207

The Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage http://www.lettre-ulysses-award.org/

The Oxford Centre for Life-Writing (Wolfson College) https://www.wolfson.ox.ac.uk/clusters/life-writing

Publications

Granta http://www.granta.com/

Longform http://www.longform.org/

Byliner http://www.byliner.com/

The Atavist http://www.atavist.net/

Narrative Magazine http://www.narrativemagazine.com/

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The 50 Best Books of Literary Journalism of the 21st Century

By Daniel Riley

For the past couple decades, we’ve felt that the best books being published—the most riveting, the most richly rendered, the most likely to last—are the works of literary journalism. You know the books we mean: books built on robust reporting and impossible-to-invent characters; books featuring sweeping plots and cinematic scenes (but true ); books drawn with the novelist’s eye for detail and incident (but real ); books that tell stories that, despite the quickening pace of nearly everything in our lives, manage to fix us in place and to light up our brains. For the best books of this kind, writers slow down, look close and wide, and organize the diffuse and the chaotic into definitive narratives that help us better understand our present times, and those of the recent past. These stories arrange our world, inspire art (film, TV), and endure. Which is why this is the form that so many of our most gifted journalists turn to, to do their finest work.

Some of the best and most notable works of this sort from the previous century—works like John Hersey’s Hiroshima ; Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff ; Janet Malcolm’s The Journalist and the Murderer ; James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time ; Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief; Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood , et cetera—are canon at this point. But we wondered which works published since 2000 might serve as a modern update. On our quest to create a list of the great books of literary journalism from the 21st century, we canvassed dozens and dozens of American journalists who do this kind of reporting and writing at the highest level. Among those we asked were winners of Pulitzer Prizes, National Book Awards, and National Magazine Awards, as well as a number of GQ contributors. We wanted to know which books were their favorites, or the most envy-inducing, or the most inspiring, or the most plain enjoyable. As Lawrence Wright, author of The Looming Tower (among other works that firmly fit in this genre), helpfully put it when providing his nominations: “I intend only to recommend books that gave me actual pleasure in reading. There aren’t very many in any case, as most of my reading is always devoted to research. But I had some nice snacks along the way and an occasional full meal.”

We asked writers to steer away from straight biography, memoir, history, and criticism (though some of the best books on this list have a little of E: All of the above ). At times, we ended up breaking our own rules to accommodate overwhelming favorites—and weighted things a little heavily in the direction of subjects GQ has always been most interested in. We wound up limiting the list to one book per author, despite the fact that many authors had multiple books nominated. And we ultimately ruled out essay collections; each of the books here unearths and unspools the story of one place, event, subject, or set of people. You may very well take issue with the order (it’s plenty subjective), but no book here doesn’t belong. Consider this a heat map of sorts of the books that were cited most frequently and passionately—a most-enjoyed, most-admired, most-awe-inducing 50. We hope you love it, hate it, or at least find something great to read.

1. Behind the Beautiful Forevers

by Katherine Boo, 2012

Boo immersed herself for years in the lives of those recycling garbage in a vast settlement near the airport in Mumbai.

Boo embedded for more than three years in a makeshift settlement near the Mumbai airport to provide an unprecedented look at some of the hidden lives of the Indian underclass. Boo depicts great poverty and suffering with unsentimental empathy, and finds dramatic narratives in the relationships, corruption, and hope of this unique society of people attempting to eke out a living by collecting trash and selling it for recycling. Behind the Beautiful Forevers is one of the finest examples of slipping into the consciousnesses of strangers, and faithfully transmitting what it’s like to be someone else, somewhere else. George Packer, the author most recently of Last Best Hope , marveled at the daunting journalistic challenges Boo undertook to tell the story. “Katherine Boo assigned herself a very hard subject—to tell the story of desperately poor people in a foreign slum whose language she didn't speak. With passion, intelligence, resourcefulness, and courage, she achieved perfection.” GQ correspondent Chris Heath added: “The true strength and triumph of Boo's book is less its depiction of the drama that gradually evolves, compelling as that is, than its unfolding incremental, quotidian portrait of lives lived in a Mumbai slum. And how, while Boo allows you to feel her full immersion and presence, for the most part she manages to do so in such an unshowy and un-self-congratulatory way that her restraint and poise feel like a tacit reproach to generations of other-worlds nonfiction before her.”

2. The Warmth of Other Suns

by Isabel Wilkerson, 2010

The great book on the Great Migration. In what amounted to 15 years of research, interviews, and writing, Wilkerson, the former Chicago bureau chief of The New York Times, re-elevated and reanimated—through the specific stories of three individuals—the underappreciated epic that was the exodus of the nearly six million Black Americans who moved from the South to the North and West between 1915 and 1970. “Much like its author, The Warmth of Other Suns is both widely praised and yet deeply underrated,” said 60 Minutes correspondent and GQ contributor Wesley Lowery. “Wilkerson was the first Black woman ever awarded a Pulitzer when she won the prize in 1994, for her New York Times feature writing. In this book, she brings lyrical writing and deep reporting to what she accurately describes as ‘perhaps the biggest underreported story of the 20th century,’ the Great Migration. To the extent that any one single book can explain the nation we live in today, it's this one. Yet even with such historical sweep, Wilkerson finds narrative closeness, bringing us into the lives of the ordinary Black Americans whose stories history so often overlooks.”

3. Killers of the Flower Moon

by David Grann, 2017

Grann investigated a series of murders of the Osage tribe in Oklahoma in the 1920s, after oil was discovered beneath their land. He conjures indelible characters (both innocent and evil), based on vast records and interviews with surviving members of families, and renders vivid tales of the newly formed FBI, which was sent to Osage County to look into the mysterious circumstances surrounding the deaths. Doug Bock Clark, a Pro Publica investigative reporter and the author of The Last Whalers , praised the book’s “exacting detective work, straightforward yet poetic prose, and suspense-novel pacing,” while noting that “the chilling conspiracy implicates not a single murderer but a swath of American society in the 1920s.” Grann, whose The Lost City of Z was nominated nearly as frequently by the writers we asked, seems drawn like a heat-seeking missile to true stories with cinematic shape, a sense that will be made all the more evident when Martin Scorsese’s film adaptation of this book arrives next year.

4. Random Family

by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, 2003

LeBlanc spent over a decade with her subjects, two women and their families struggling to survive in the Bronx, to create a novelistically intense, panoramic portrait of life in the city at the turn of the century. The resulting book has the sweep and intimacy of an epic multigenerational novel. “ Random Family is a moving and unflinching portrait of the one-sided class war waged by the powerful in this country against its own citizens,” said Anand Gopal, the New Yorker writer and author of No Good Men Among the Living . “As an ethnographic exercise and a work of narrative nonfiction, it set the agenda that influenced a generation of writers. It's unlikely that we’ll see a work of this scale, ambition, or pathos again anytime soon.”

5. The Passage of Power

by Robert Caro, 2012

Caro’s deep reporting on President Johnson brought new perspective to even the most familiar moments in his life, like the Kennedy assassination.

Book number four of Caro’s masterful multivolume epic on the life and times of Lyndon Johnson focuses on the first part of the ’60s, including the assassination of JFK and LBJ’s ascent to the presidency. Caro, who’s spent the past 45 years reporting on Johnson, afforded himself time to track down the details—relocating from his home in New York to Washington and the Texas Hill Country (where LBJ grew up), and seemingly interviewing every living human who knew the man along the way. Consequently, Caro is able to do impossible things with his storytelling, like make the story of the Kennedy assassination feel new. “He is perhaps our greatest living nonfiction writer, given his ceaseless research and authoritative, beguiling style,” said Lawrence Wright. “His books are more than biography—they are portraits of America. I study his work carefully.”

6. Between the World and Me

by Ta-Nehisi Coates, 2015

Coates’s deeply personal book was singled out by many of the writers we surveyed as one of the monumental works of the last 20 years that, though arguably a memoir, did as much to shift the national consciousness about the experience of Black Americans as any projects of pure reporting. As a correspondent at The Atlantic at the time, Coates was producing seminal magazine stories on topics ranging from reparations to mass incarceration to the Obama presidency (all work featured in his book We Were Eight Years in Power ). But Between the World and Me was something powerfully different—a poignant book-length letter to his son that blended personal history, American history, and reportage to reframe what it means to inhabit a Black body in America. The winner of the National Book Award for Non-Fiction, Between the World and Me was hailed when it was published as a work destined to become a classic. In the years since its arrival, it has only become more essential.

7. Going Clear

by Lawrence Wright, 2013

The Scientology building in East Hollywood.

Wright produced a definitive exposé of Scientology and its steadfast grip on Hollywood. The mix of reporting on the entertainment world, the capsule portraits of the souls who’ve cycled in and out of the organization, and the history of the don’t-call-it-a-cult is so varied and outrageous at times that it gives the book a lighter touch than some other subjects on this list, despite the harrowing consequences for so many individuals involved.

8. The Adversary

by Emmanuel Carrère, 2000

A true-crime account by a contemporary French master that’s been likened to a sleek francophone In Cold Blood . Set in the world of the wealthy Geneva suburbs and the global health organizations based there, the book traces the story of a French man who deceives his wife, parents, children, mistress, and friends for 18 years, before collapsing under the weight of his fabricated double life and killing five of them. It’s hard to believe you’re not reading modern fiction at almost every moment. “I can’t think of a book that somehow simultaneously so adheres to, and subverts, genre conventions,” said GQ correspondent Alice Gregory. “I dare you to even try to put it down to pee.”

9. Say Nothing

by Patrick Radden Keefe, 2018

Demonstrators in the streets in Derry, Northern Ireland in August 1969—the chaotic dawn of what would become The Troubles.

Keefe resurfaced the wider story of the Troubles in Northern Ireland through the unsolved mystery of the disappearance, and suspected murder by the IRA, of one woman in Belfast. The telling of the complex tale of that time, place, and politics is extraordinarily rich and definitive, without ever being overbearing. Though built around fascinating character portraits of IRA members who, in some cases, still wrestle today with the decisions they made as young people, it’s a murder mystery at its heart—and (spoiler alert) Keefe solves the unsolved mystery.

10. Ghettoside

by Jill Leovy, 2015

Leovy, a former Los Angeles Times reporter, spent years immersed in South Los Angeles, examining the disturbingly disproportionate number of murders of Black men in L.A., and how infrequently the LAPD seemed interested in solving them. “In Ghettoside, ” said Emily Bazelon, staff writer at The New York Times Magazine , “Leovy illuminated a crucial aspect of criminal justice that was previously unexamined—the ‘solve rate’ of homicides and shootings for police departments. When the police can't or don't solve violent crimes, community trust breaks down and crime increases. Leovy shows exactly how the dynamic works in Los Angeles. She's got everything—rich narrative, deep reporting, sharp analysis. This is a book that other writers (like me!) pass around with admiration and envy.”

11. Hidden Valley Road

by Robert Kolker, 2020

A young couple in midcentury Colorado have 12 children. Six of them are diagnosed with schizophrenia. How? Here’s GQ contributor and New York Times book critic Molly Young: “The strange and extreme story of the Galvin family is a lens through which we learn about the scientific mystery that is schizophrenia: a disorder that has repelled a thousand theories and confounded seemingly everyone who studies it. (Is it genetic? Neurological? Viral? Environmental? Combination of these things?) Somehow Kolker lays a legible path through the disorder's history, centering his narrative on a family that was ultimately ravaged by it. The book is as riveting as its cover is graphically terrible—which is saying something!”

12. The Tiger

by John Vaillant, 2010

Vaillant’s investigation of a man-eating Siberian tiger took readers to the Russian far east.

The tiger is a tiger in eastern Russia who starts hunting men to avenge the death of other tigers. A man comes across the man-eating tiger and, with the help of some trackers, simply tries to survive. It’s a premise and a setting so remote, it can feel like a folktale—and an adventure so heart-thumping, it can feel like a spy thriller. Patrick Radden Keefe added: “Not as well known as some of the books folks will suggest, but an unbelievable tale, expertly told, with a few paragraphs that I would give my eye teeth to have written.”

13. Nothing to Envy

by Barbara Demick, 2009

The incredible, intimate account of the lives of six North Korean citizens over 15 years, a period that spans the death of Kim Il-sung and the rise to power of Kim Jong-il. Lots of books on this list provide a peek behind a proverbial curtain, but no curtain is quite as impenetrable as the one shrouding the world’s most repressive regime. “If its sole aim had been to illuminate the contours of daily life in North Korea, Nothing to Envy would be considered a grand success,” said Brendan I. Koerner, a contributing editor at Wired and the author of The Skies Belong to Us. “What elevates it into the realm of art is the way in which Barbara Demick builds the book around a central tale of forbidden love—a romance that gradually reveals how even the vilest tyranny can never squelch the emotional appetites that make us human.”

14. Moneyball

by Michael Lewis, 2003

Lewis’s celebrated study of the 2002 underdog Oakland A’s helped popularize a new way of thinking about success in sports.

The story of the budget-strapped Oakland A’s, their general manager, Billy Beane, and the data-based approach to finding undervalued assets (in this case, baseball players) launched an analytics revolution in baseball, sports, and then society at large. Rarely has the lesson of a book—saying nothing of its title, now a verb—had such an enormous impact beyond the bounds of its cover. Which is probably what puts Moneyball on this list ahead of The Big Short, The Fifth Risk , or The Blind Side —all of which showcase Lewis’s great gift of finding the perfect characters and narratives to animate big, complex ideas that have been hiding in plain sight. Many writers look to reverse-engineer books this way, but no one executes the mix of story-finding and storytelling like Lewis.

15. The Forever War

by Dexter Filkins, 2008

At the start of the 21st century, America went back to war, and so too did the war journalists. The confounding circumstances for interminable conflict created the conditions for some of the most resonant, if tragic and terrible, stories worth telling over the past 20 years—none more so, arguably, than those witnessed during Filkins’s time on the ground as a New York Times foreign correspondent. Filkins, who reported on the rise of the Taliban in the ’90s, the aftermath of 9/11 in New York, and the American wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq that came as a consequence, transforms the often abstract maelstrom of the “war on terror” into people and scenes—and, consequently, literature. It’s as immediate and sensitive a portrait of what combat was like in these wars as anything written.

16. The New Jim Crow

by Michelle Alexander, 2010

After the 2015 death of Freddie Gray while in police custody, protestors massed outside Baltimore Police Central Booking and Intake Center.

An immersive exploration—and condemnation—of the U.S. criminal justice system by renowned legal scholar Alexander, who deploys extensive reporting and research to spotlight the experiences of Black men in a society governed by policies that target them (e.g., the war on drugs; efforts to restrict voting) and a criminal justice system that arrests, prosecutes, and incarcerates them disproportionately. The moment into which the book was published, concurrent with the election of Barack Obama, was not one, Alexander argues, of new enlightenment on matters of racial justice—or “color blindness,” as was a popular notion in the first years of America’s first Black president—but, rather, a moment that called for considerably more attention and work to break the racial caste system that continues to make second-class citizens out of so many Black Americans. The book, influential upon first publication, found new and even greater resonance a decade later, when it emerged as a foundational text for readers seeking a deeper understanding of the issues at the center of the Black Lives Matter protests.

17. Amity and Prosperity

by Eliza Griswold, 2018

A pipeline carrying highly volatile fracked gas liquids runs through a residential neighborhood in Pennsylvania, 2019.

Griswold found a magnificent heroine in Stacey Haney, a hardworking mother of two from Amity, Pennsylvania, who is first seduced by—and then finds herself desperately fighting—the big bad wolf of the fracking industry, and all that props it up. “You wouldn't think a thicc tome about fracking in Appalachia would be a page-turner (or maybe you would; who am I to judge?), but I read this in one sitting on a flight,” said Molly Young. “Written like a thriller, it maps out a recent chapter of the boom-and-bust cycle of resource extraction in America. It's about technology, it's about law, it's about kids and animals who mysteriously fall ill, and lakes that turn toxic from runoff, and families who find out that they have zero control over the air they breathe and the land they thought they owned.”

18. The Future Is History

by Masha Gessen, 2018

Gessen's portrait of a society shaped by Vladimir Putin focuses on the failed promise of life in a post-Soviet Russia.

Gessen presents the chilling story of the creep of totalitarianism in contemporary Russia not from the bird’s-eye view of the academy or the Kremlin, but through extensive reporting on the lives of four young people, born at the supposed dawn of a democracy, as they attempt to find their way in a society rapidly backsliding to the old order of things. The result is an immersive sense of what it’s like to live in a country where the personal and the political are intertwined at all times, where there’s no break, no hiding, and so many choices feel hugely consequential and vaguely dangerous.

19. Under the Banner of Heaven

by Jon Krakauer, 2003

Krakauer, who gave us Into the Wild and Into Thin Air in a previous century, intertwines the story of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Utah with a double murder perpetrated in the name of God by two fundamentalist Mormons. Riveting, disturbing, and as heart-pounding as anything in the previous adventures.

20. How the Word Is Passed

by Clint Smith, 2021

A journalistic, essayistic tour of sites central to slavery in America. Smith, a staff writer at The Atlantic who grew up in New Orleans, became obsessed with the legacy of slavery in his hometown, after realizing how little he had comprehended the many monuments, landmarks, and lingering reminders of the system of enslavement in the city had existed in plain view all his life. In response, Smith began to investigate the ways in which the echoes of slavery are being reckoned with in the present at eight American sites (plus one abroad) vital to the history of slavery. The book is both an eye-opening, go-to-there travelogue and a singular blend of fresh reportage and lyrical meditation on the long shadow of the country's most enduring evil.

21. One of Us

by Åsne Seierstad, 2013

Relatives gather in the aftermath of a deadly terrorist attack at a summer camp on Utoya Island, Norway, July 25, 2011.

Seierstad, a Norwegian journalist, crafted the inside story of 2011’s 22 July massacre, when 77 Norwegians—mostly teens at a summer camp—were killed by the domestic terrorist Anders Breivik. “ One of Us isn't just a deeply reported and impeccably researched anatomy of a mass killing,” said Matthew Shaer, writer-at-large at The New York Times Magazine. “It's an inherently brave book: It dares to burrow inside Breivik's head (and his sad, trauma-filled childhood) and attempt to understand why he did what he did. Most astonishing of all: Seierstad accomplishes the task without ever sensationalizing the material. She sees clearly and writes marvelously.”

22. Night Draws Near

by Anthony Shadid, 2005

U.S. soldiers and Iraqi citizens in November 2004, still early in an occupation mission that was doomed from the start.

At the outbreak of the Iraq War, when so many journalists jumped in the pool to embed with the American military, Shadid chose instead to spend his time with ordinary Iraqi people, recording the intimate stories of the impact of the American invasion and occupation on life there.

23. Dark Money

by Jane Mayer, 2016

One of the defining books on modern American politics, Dark Money focuses on the secret machinations of billionaires—specifically, the way unregulated cash drives the political agenda, especially on the radical right. A master class in how to steadily unmask the truth hidden in public records, private papers, and court documents—and how to animate the figures found there through portraits that give a sense of who these people are, why they want what they want, and how they get it.

24. No Good Men Among the Living

by Anand Gopal, 2014

Gopal chose to chronicle a piece of the war in Afghanistan from the vantage of actual Afghans—getting close enough for long enough with a Taliban commander, a U.S.-backed warlord, and a village housewife to bring a wildly complex story down to the level of the human unit, and rendering the lived experience there with vivid freshness. Suzy Hansen, a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine and the author of Notes on a Foreign Country , said, “Not only is No Good Men Among the Living beautifully written and an amazing feat of reporting, but Gopal did something that very few newspapers, magazines, or books managed to do at the time or have done since: treat the Afghan people as full human beings. It's only when you read this book that you realize how little most publications or books ever conveyed about the people the U.S. invaded and were at war with for 20 years. Gopal also amply explains why the violent, often criminally incompetent American occupation of their country failed so miserably. Hard to read this book without flinching.”

25. No Turning Back

by Rania Abouzeid, 2018

Syrian children watch traffic as civilians flee a government offensive against the country's last rebel enclave in Idlib, February 2020.

Several of the writers that we canvassed flagged this work as the first great book of reportage on the civil war in Syria—one of the most horrific and least understood events in recent years. Abouzeid, a Lebanese-Australian journalist based in Beirut, began writing about Syria in 2011, focusing on the lives of protesters. Over the next five years, she reported clandestinely from the front lines, following the story to its deepest, darkest core—delving into Assad’s prisons and the formation of ISIS—and ultimately bringing an intimacy to events most journalists wouldn’t dream of getting near.

26. The Unwinding

by George Packer, 2013

The story of an America teetering on the verge of breakdown pre-Trump sounded a warning bell of where things were headed. Packer—a staff writer for The Atlantic and the author of the frequently nominated Our Man —sketched vivid portraits of Americans, both at the center of power and as far away from it as one can be, that provide a picture, in macro and micro, of the shifting plates of the country. The whole thing reads like a giant social novel of everything, where we see the details of individual lives and institutions with equal clarity.

27. The Omnivore’s Dilemma

by Michael Pollan, 2006

The book that changed the way people who care about food think about food. Pollan has brought his blend of reporting, history, and memoir to psychedelics ( How to Change Your Mind ), plants ( The Botany of Desire ), and now psychedelic plants ( This Is Your Mind on Plants ). But The Omnivore’s Dilemma , which immersively investigated the biggest questions about what we should eat, where we should get our food from, and how those choices affect the planet, has had an enduring impact. “Find me a more pervasively influential (or better written) polemic,” said GQ correspondent Brett Martin. “Probably there are some, but not in food.”

28. Five Days at Memorial

by Sheri Fink, 2013

Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans, where 45 patients died because they could not be evacuated during Hurricane Katrina, September 11, 2005.

Fink placed us in a New Orleans hospital in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when much of the city was without power, and the already urgent life-and-death stakes for doctors, patients, and administrators were dialed up even further. It’s an incredible 360-degree portrait of a single place during a compressed and critical period of time.

by Bill Buford, 2006

A delicious history of Italian cooking, with a twist: Buford, an amateur cook, entered the kitchen of one of New York City’s hottest restaurants as a full-time employee, and gave us a story of Italian cuisine through the many characters (some, like Mario Batali, now disgraced) who prepare it, serve it, and eat it. A high-water mark in the subgenre of narrative nonfiction we might call “amateurs masquerading as professionals.”

30. Barbarian Days

by William Finnegan, 2015

Yes, this is technically a memoir. But the writers we asked couldn’t help surfacing Finnegan’s cultural and personal history of surfing. A pure life-affirming, globe-trotting, era-spanning pleasure from start to finish—and an incredible example of what can happen when reporters re-report their own interesting lives.

31. The Yellow House

by Sarah M. Broom, 2019

A study of New Orleans through personal history. Or, as Brett Martin put it: “Memoir as sweeping urban history.” Broom explores a century in New Orleans East, charting the rising and falling fortunes of the neighborhood and the families, like hers, who’ve built their lives there.

32. Rising Out of Hatred

by Eli Saslow, 2018

The story of Derek Black, who grew up in the cradle of white supremacy (David Duke is his godfather), before experiencing a profound awakening in college and turning his back on the cause he was born to lead. Wesley Lowery called it “the best-written book on white supremacists, possibly ever.”

33. The Beast

by Óscar Martínez, 2010

Migrants in Chiapas board "The Beast" in an attempt to reach the United States border, September 2014.

A young El Salvadoran journalist, Martínez embedded with migrants making their way to the U.S. border along the extremely dangerous route that more than a quarter of a million Central Americans travel each year now—a route that includes the harrowing threat of abduction, harsh conditions, and passage on the freight train known as the Beast. “Óscar Martínez's debut is an absolutely stunning display of reportage and writing,” said Evan Ratliff, author of The Mastermind and cohost of the Longform podcast. “It's also underappreciated among English-speaking readers; amidst all the ink that's been spilled on immigration and the border, to me it's the piece of narrative nonfiction that should be required reading. I'm haunted by its subjects' struggle and awed by their bravery, along with that of Martínez himself.”

34. The Sixth Extinction

by Elizabeth Kolbert, 2014

The comprehensive book on our likely climate fate as we approach the precipice. This time around, the mass extinction event (which will be the sixth in the past 500 million years) is not something like the asteroid that ended the reign of the dinosaurs but, rather, a cataclysm brought on by humans. Kolbert sidled up to leading scientists to translate the trend line of where we’ve been and where we’re headed—and what we’re losing along the way. It’s the highest form of writing about the natural world at the intersection of history, science, and society.

35. Dreamland

by Sam Quinones, 2015

Sap from opium poppies being harvested for the production of heroin.

Quinones quit his job to produce this penetrating study of the opioid epidemic, from the vantage of both the blue-collar towns it’s presently ravaging and the pharmaceutical companies that have willfully stoked its flames. The result is a book for now and for future historians.

36. She Said

by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, 2019

The unputdownable behind-the-scenes story of the New York Times investigative journalists whose reporting helped take down Harvey Weinstein and catalyze the #MeToo movement. “ She Said is great reportage about great reportage,” said Bryan Curtis, cohost of The Press Box podcast and editor-at-large at The Ringer. “For every working journalist who’s forced to fill out an annual review, this is the most convincing ‘state your accomplishments’ section in modern history. The way I get people to read the book is to say, ‘It's like All the President's Men. No, really. It is.’”

37. Bad Blood

by John Carreyrou, 2018

Elizabeth Holmes, once considered the wealthiest (and youngest) self-made female billionaire in America, pictured before her stunning fall.

If you want to read just one book about Elizabeth Holmes, her health-tech company, Theranos, and the many men (and some women) who got swept up in her multibillion-dollar start-up con, make it this one. The story begins with Carreyrou, then a Wall Street Journal reporter, smelling something a little fishy, and follows along as he ultimately winds up exposing a sham on a scale we don’t often encounter. Shoe-leather reporting at its newspaper-iest. An incredible American ambition. And a supporting cast of onetime board members and defenders (Henry Kissinger, William Perry, James Mattis, David Boies) that’s kind of hard to believe. The cameos alone of those who were hoodwinked along the way are worth the price of admission.

38. Deep Down Dark

by Héctor Tobar, 2014

After 69 days trapped underground, 33 Chilean miners were reunited with their families—the culmination of a rescue mission that captivated the world in 2010.

The exclusive tale of the 33 men who were trapped underground for 69 days when a copper-and-gold mine in the Atacama Desert in Chile collapsed in 2010. Tobar, a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and novelist, focuses in equal parts on the drama of the miners beneath the earth and the family members—the children, wives, and girlfriends (many of whom don’t know about each other until their encounters at the site)—above. “With careful pacing, Tobar makes the story so visceral and gripping, it’s almost a fly-on-the-wall account of a natural disaster,” said Rosecrans Baldwin, a GQ contributor and the author of Everything Now . “But it's the humanity of the men's relationships that makes the account so extraordinary.”

39. A Moonless, Starless Sky

by Alexis Okeowo, 2017

A mother searching for her missing daughter who was kidnapped in Dapchi by Boko Haram, February 2018.

Okeowo embedded with victims of violence and terror in vulnerable corners of contemporary Africa to provide a much-needed view from the ground in such underreported circumstances. “A writer who should be better known, and who will, I believe, have a great career, is Alexis Okeowo,” said Lawrence Wright. “Her first book consists of four stories about extremism in Africa, and the devastating but also surprising struggles of ordinary men and women to deal with extremism in their own countries and their own faiths. Unsaid in the book is the courage of the author to engage with victims and perpetrators of terror. There is the story of a woman kidnapped by a member of the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda, a relationship that led to romance and transformation; here also are stories of the girls taken by Boko Haram in Nigeria, and of modern-day slavery in Mauritania, and of girls trying to play basketball in Somalia despite threats from Islamic extremists. These are stories that desperately need attention, and Okeowo tells them with compassion and insight.”

40. DisneyWar

by James B. Stewart, 2005

Business! Stewart, who has brought his reporting to bear on several industries, examined Disney at the level of both the minimum-wage laborer and the tip-top executive. “This book is 600 pages long, and I’d read a sequel right now,” said Reeves Wiedeman, New York contributing editor and author of Billion Dollar Loser. “The problem is there may never be a book quite like it again. The heart of this sprawling story is Michael Eisner’s tenure running Disney, but it's really an intimate look at the egos and power struggles that permeate the upper echelons of American business. Stewart worked as a Goofy impersonator to get an inside look at Disney World, but the remarkable thing is the access he got to the biggest players in this saga: Eisner gave Stewart the notes for an autobiography he never wrote, plus candid memos written in the middle of various crises. (‘Of course, there is always the truck that could hit him,’ he says of a rival.) It's a delicious look at how our biggest cultural and business institutions are run by a bunch of emotional humans.”

41. Imperial Life in the Emerald City

by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, 2006

Chandrasekaran centered his reporting and narrative on the Green Zone—the international zone and governmental center of the Coalition Provisional Authority—beginning from the invasion of Iraq in 2003 to the official transfer of power to Iraqis in 2005, a focused lens through which to tell the tale of the bungled handling of the American occupation. A classic of narrowed scope, in order to tell one deep and detailed piece of an impossibly large story.

by Anne Applebaum, 2003

Gulag inmates being forced to build a Russian canal in 1933.

Through vast reporting and meticulous research, Applebaum re-created life in the Soviet concentration camps that held millions of political and criminal prisoners between the Russian Revolution and the collapse of the Soviet Union. From the stories of the individuals subjected to the gulag emerges a vivid portrait of an extraordinary society. Applebaum—a close observer of communism and, more recently, the lurch toward autocracy in Europe—is particularly skillful at linking the 20th century to the 21st.

43. The Return

by Hisham Matar, 2016

Matar’s father went missing when Matar was 19 years old. Two decades later, the author returned to his native Libya to report out the circumstances of his father’s disappearance—resurfacing the distressing conditions a political dissident faced in the early ’90s in Qaddafi’s Libya, and exploring what has become of Libya and the Middle East in the wake of Qaddafi’s death.

44. The Sum of Us

by Heather McGhee, 2021

McGee, a specialist in social and economic policy, took a personal journey across America to vividly animate—through her reporting, interviews, and policy work—ideas often found only in wonkier corners of Washington. Such as the notion that racism has a cost not just for nonwhite people but also for white people themselves, and that society pays a price for the belief, held by so many Americans, that the progress of some inevitably comes at the expense of others. “ The Sum of Us is for the moment and for all time,” said Rosecrans Baldwin. “I went from start to finish in a couple days, and left it powerfully persuaded. Harrowing, hopeful. Personal, political. The zero-sum mentality that undergirds so much of American society never looked stupider.”

45. This Cold Heaven

by Gretel Ehrlich, 2001

Ehrlich transports readers to a beautiful and beguiling north .

Greenland in all of its glory. Ehrlich weaves a masterful story of history, cultural anthropology, and a personal journey at the edge of where humans can live. “This is the very best of travel writing,” said Michael Finkel, GQ contributor and author of The Stranger in the Woods . “Poetic and brutal and so immersive and deeply felt.”

46. Notes on a Foreign Country

by Suzy Hansen, 2017

After moving to Istanbul, journalist Suzy Hansen was forced to steadily reckon with the idea of America she’d grown up with at the end of the 20th century, and to see America’s place in the world through the eyes of the many people she met during her years of traveling and reporting in Turkey, Greece, Egypt, Afghanistan, and Iran. The result is a story of both extensive reportage and personal reflection on America’s place in the world during the dawning of an era of decline. “It’s rare to read a book as an adult that leads you to question your understanding of the world,” said Sarah A. Topol, writer-at-large for The New York Times Magazine . “Suzy Hansen’s book filled me with the kind of intellectual excitement I most associate with college—where something profoundly altered my thinking or gave words to vague ideas I’d had in my head. Part memoir, part history, part reportage, it is my most recommended book for anyone who wants to understand being American in the world today.”

47. Maximum City

by Suketu Mehta, 2004

A polyphonic study of all the edges and interiors of Mumbai by a native son. Mehta, who was born in Kolkata and raised in Mumbai, returned to the overwhelming megalopolis of his youth after 20 years in the U.S. to render vivid portraits of under-seen individuals, as well as an enormous lively mural of the rollicking collective. The book is further proof that cities—for obvious reasons—are among the most ideal subjects for writers of the sort we’re celebrating here.

48. Three Women

by Lisa Taddeo, 2019

A deep and granular immersion into the sex lives, thoughts, and experiences of, yes, three women. If Taddeo could’ve gotten this close to reporting the vivid-most consciousness of literally anyone (mail carrier; commercial fisherman; IT technician), it probably would’ve been interesting, just to experience what it’s like to spend time in someone else’s brain and body. That the topic was indeed the body—and how desire can overwhelm our lives—makes it tough to not keep reading. The subject matter may not be for everyone, but the reporting feat is undeniably rich.

49. Play Their Hearts Out

by George Dohrmann, 2010

Tyson Chandler, who was drafted into the NBA in 2001, was the most promising young player nurtured by coach Joe Keller in Dohrmann’s sweeping story.

Dohrmann followed an AAU basketball team for eight years, charting the growth of the kids as players and people, from childhood to college—as well as the exploits of the adults who persuaded families to let them lead their children through the maze of grassroots youth basketball to the maybe-just-maybe promised land. The commitment to the sweep of this story is like Boyhood , but for basketball. As New York Times Magazine writer-at-large Jason Zengerle put it: “It’s the best book about basketball—and the hoop dreams of teenage boys and the sinister schemes of grown-ass adults—I’ve ever read.”

50. The Beautiful Fall

by Alicia Drake, 2006

A plunge into the time and place that brought us fashion as we know it today. “ The ultimate reported fashion book,” said GQ fashion critic Rachel Tashjian, “detailing the tumultuous rivalry between Yves Saint Laurent and Karl Lagerfeld during the 1970s in Paris… Richly reported, with terrific details about drugs, decadence, and design process.”

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Story Craft

May 9, 2024, from the solid foundation of articles to the creative reach of stories, a college journalism student and aspiring writer shares what she's learning about the power of both factual and descriptive reporting.

Laine Cibulskis

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A bust of Julius Caesar (Pixabay) and actor Russell Crowe in the 2000 film "Gladiator" (Britannica)

By Laine Cibulskis

Then I landed in journalism school at the University of Missouri, where I learned to tell other people’s stories, without the fluff and flair of creative writing. My main role as a beginning journalist is to provide information to the public, and let them decide for themselves what that information means to them. So my focus for now is on reporting and writing articles — pieces grounded and shaped by information. Along the way, I’m learning how to use more creative storytelling techniques in those pieces, but only when necessary and relevant.

Here are some of the main lessons I’ve picked up so far, from professors, editors and my own experience.

Know the difference between articles and stories

Articles help serve one of journalism’s main roles in democracy: that of the informer. Articles transfer knowledge to readers, and point the reader to what’s happening in the news.

As a reporter for the Columbia Missourian and KBIA this semester, I started building up my article writing muscles. On my general assignment shift, I try to answer these four essential questions my professor, Liz Brixey , emphasizes in our reporting and writing class:

• Keep your focus here. Fewer words are often better. Boiling it down to a central theme or idea can help narrow your focus.
• Make a list. Do some furious Google searches. What do you want to know and how might these people be able to provide an answer?
• Do I need data to help explain this story? Research? Sources other than humans?
• Always keep visuals in mind. Is there an opportunity for a photo or video piece to help bring the reader to a place? Is there an infographic that can help explain the situation? How about audio?

These questions can help keep articles clear and informative, and help writers keep focused on answering a central question. They also make journalistic writing easier over time: I’m better at tackling tough situations like suicides and executions, researching complicated topics like COVID statistics and environmental policy, and reaching out to people to help get information to the public.

That foundation remains crucial when you start venturing into the world of stories.

Stories give readers information and an experience. A story doesn’t just transfer knowledge: It serves to transform the reader by expanding their understanding of a situation or bringing them closer into someone else’s world.

Think about the difference between a documentary film on Roman history versus a movie like “Gladiator.” The documentary provides straightforward information: dates, names, places. Movies, like stories, give us characters, plot and conflict. Even if your journalistic story doesn’t involve watching Russell Crowe fighting in the colosseum, strong reporting can still bring any reader deep into a moment.

Your biggest ally is your notes

Note taking, at this point in my life and career, soothes me. Whether I’m in class, in a meeting or in the field, writing down information is both a necessary tool and an emotional comfort. Sometimes, the best thing a reporter can be is quiet, and notetaking helps with that. My professor says that even the strongest of memories are fainter than the lightest of ink. Give yourself the space to absorb the situation and melt into your notebook.

What to notice and write down?

• The atmosphere at an event
• What people are wearing
• People’s mannerisms
• The sound of the room
• The sound of someone’s voice
• The color of the walls

You probably get the gist: Make anything that you usually observe subconsciously conscious. Describing the scene with senses can help bring your reader there.

And as a radio journalist, I always have a recorder on me, which means I’m always listening for noise that can help bring a listener to where I am. What are the protestors shouting? Are there birds singing? How about the champagne popping at the election night watch party?

Help your sources help you

I’m learning that the power of journalistic writing isn’t necessarily about crafting the most beautifully constructed sentence; it’s about solid reporting and clear writing that can educate your reader, but that also has the ability to transport them to any place in the world, and help them understand the significance of that world.

That can feel overwhelming, especially on deadline. But I’m also learning that you have to do this on your own: Small questions to sources during an interview can help contextualize their experience beyond the basic facts. Examples:

• What was the weather like that day?
• Did you notice anything different about the people you interact with?
• What did you eat for breakfast? What were you wearing?

One of my toughest assignments last semester was an audio profile of Richard, an elderly man, who found that art classes at the local arts alliance helped him build a community that supported him while his wife was in hospice care.

I was initially uncomfortable approaching sensitive emotional topics with Richard, but having two interviews really helped me narrow my story. I brainstormed with my instructor and she helped me find appropriate ways to ask questions that were at the heart of Richard’s experience.

• Tell me about your wife.
• How did you meet?
• Where is your wife in the home?
• Does she see your art when you come home?

Asking deeper questions helped me capture a story beyond a man sitting at a table painting a still life. I got a feel for the bond he and his wife shared, how her hair sparkled when they met, how she supervises Richard’s cooking skills from the living room, how she lights up when Richard shows her his art work, some of which now hangs on their walls.

I used sound to bring listeners right into the art classes, with the chatter of the community, the scratch of charcoal and Richard’s commentary while he sketches.

Less is more

With strong emotions like grief, love and outrage, less is more. Let your audience feel it for themselves. If you bring your reader into the room, you won’t have to spell out the situation to them. One saying that might be useful: “The hotter the story, the cooler the type.”

Sometimes stories might lead individuals to action, especially when there’s frustration or even outrage expressed. This is why your article basics are so essential: Making your story bulletproof means your audience has the right information they need if they decide act.

Never forget the foundations

Don’t think telling a story lets you forget the who, what, when, where, why and how. But you can report them in more expansive and creative ways than just-the-facts:

• Who are my characters beyond their name and title?
• What was the scene like? What action(s) happened?
• Where do I want to bring my reader to let them experience the story?
• When are these events happening? How will I help my audience move through time?
• What’s the causal path that led to this moment? What motivated this?
• How did this happen? What led to this situation? Are there unfamiliar or technical things I need to explain?

And never forget your nut graf, or your “so what?” What’s the relevance of this story to your audience? Why would it matter to them?

Here’s one example from earlier in the semester: Instead of telling my readers that a protest happened on campus in the afternoon, I told them that students stood out in freezing temperatures while their university was closed to protest administration . Though weather leads are usually clichés, in this case, it was a detail relevant to the story and a testament to the protestors’ dedication. I’d still consider the piece an article, but thinking like a storyteller helped add a touch of experience rather than just the cold, hard facts.

Another example of favorite storytelling is “ His name was Emmett Till ” by Wright Thompson . It includes minute details that would have passed by if you wern’t paying enough attention or taking enough notes, whether that’s during an interview or in a post-interview brain dump.

Like many stories from The Atlantic, the piece reads more like a novel than a news story. When Thompson visits Jeff Andrews on his property to visit the barn where Emmett Till was tortured, we know what Andrews is wearing, we hear the gravel crunching, we see the barn. The story uses time references to pull the reader to 1955 and back to the present. Readers might feel like they’re in Drew, Mississippi, where the barn is, or in Money, where 14-year-old Till was accused of making improper advances on a white woman named Carolyn Bryant. Till’s cousin, the Rev. Wheeler Parker, who was there, said that Till whistled at the woman. From the story:

Now the building is falling in on itself, overgrown with vines, ivy, and trees. In the owners’ desire for the store not to become a monument to a killing, it’s become something else: a monument to the desire, and ultimate failure, of white Mississippi to erase the stain of Till’s death.

The biggest takeaways

Ultimately, whether you’re reporting for an article or story, remember that people have many dimensions whose lives aren’t limited by the news situation they’re in. It’s our job as jouranlists to explain those dimensions in a way that’s relevant to the story and to the audience, whether you’re providing straightforward information or giving your reader a vicarious experience.

And although poetry isn’t my main gig anymore, I know that a keen eye and good questions can help you tell any story, whether that’s your own or a story of loss, love, and everything and anyone in-between.

Laine Cibulskis is a student at the University of Missouri studying journalism and economics. She reports for KBIA, mid-Missouri’s NPR affiliate.

Further Reading

“it smelled like margarine and white bread, marriage and cramped flats.”, by jacqui banaszynski, from nieman storyboard, the future of journalism in very good hands, by lauren kessler, a better way to teach writing try journalism, by elizabeth toohey.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This course examines journalism and its relationship with either fact or truth, or both, especially considering its vital role in a politically free society. The course also compares journalism, and literary journalism, along with (other) literature and film. Aside from written assignments, required work in the course will consist of reading journalistic / literary journalistic texts of various kinds, and viewing like films--all relevant to the overarching discussion in the course. This course is a senior seminar; as such it is designed and committed to allowing students the opportunity to work closely with an instructor in a specific area of the instructor's expertise.

Prerequisites : HUM 102; and one from among HUM 211, HUM 212 and Hist 213 or their equivalents, all with a grade of C or better; completion of either the Lit/Hist/Phil/STS or the Open Elective in Humanities and Social Science, with a grade of C or better.

Learning Outcomes : By the end of this course students should be able to: demonstrate critical thinking within a narrowly focused subject area through both oral and written communication;develop in-depth, focused, polemical, researched writing with full documentation of sources; write argument-based essays in response to thematic questions; and, explain the dynamic of news media within a free society.

COURSE TEXTS

Kovach, Bill, and Tom Rosenstiel. The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect.   New York : Three Rivers Press, 2014 . ISBN:9780804136785

Writing and Documentation Guides (explanations, examples, etc.)

Abbreviations for Marking Papers See also:

Guidelines for a  Successful Oral Presentation (see also SUGGESTED PROTOCOL FOR TEAM ORAL REPORTS toward the bottom of page):

http://go.owu.edu/~dapeople/ggpresnt.html

http://www.auburn.edu/~burnsma/oralpres.html http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~riceowl/oral_presentations.htm

http://web.cba.neu.edu/~ewertheim/skills/oral.htm

• Oral/Visual Reports, one a group report on a weekly assignment, the other an individual report on the term paper project.

•   Weekly Canvas postings (one original of 100 to 150 words, another 50 to 100-word response to someone else’s post).

•   A two-staged research project culminating in a researched and fully-cited term paper* (see writing and documentation guidelines above, listed with the course readings):

Stage One: a Term Paper Announcement (see below^) consisting of a Working Title, a one-sentence Thesis Statement (one sentence only, though the sentence can be long and multi-claused and may use one semicolon), a detailed, step-by-step Description of your future paper’s Writing Strategy (i.e. how you will prove your thesis,   not   a summary   of what will be in your paper), and a Bibliography (in MLA format--see the link to documentation guides above) of at least three secondary sources, one of which must be a hard-copy source (for the purposes of this assignment assigned readings, encyclopedias, dictionaries, and textbooks will not be considered as counting toward the requisite minimum number of secondary sources, although they can be used in your term paper project);  

Stage Two: a 1500 to 3000-word, fully-documented, original and critical, discursive,   polemical   (please look up this word if you don't really know what it means) and otherwise argumentative essay that must include at least some detailed analysis of the artifacts being discussed (see below^^), along with a bibliography of all sources (the bibliography will not be considered part of word count). The term paper topic is open (though the topic must have something to do with the subject of this course) but must be approved ahead of time by the instructor.

The Term Paper is credited when preceded by the Term Paper Announcement .

*An original work of literary journalism (or voiced investigative reporting), developed in consultation with the instructor, may be substituted for the term paper project. This work would also, like the term paper project, manifest in two written stages. Instructions for this option are available at the course homepage in Canvas.

•   Final examination, comprehensive, essay in format, open-book.

F ailure to submit the final exam will result in the papers that are part of the term paper project being disqualified .

N.B.: Papers must be word processed using a 12’ font, double-spaced with one inch margins, spell-checked, and to the best of one's ability grammar-checked. Papers must be submitted as Word files; under no circumstances should a paper be submitted as a pdf .

    Weekly Canvas posts should be single-spaced but otherwise must also be spell-checked and to the best of one's ability grammar-checked, and must be in standard English and adhere to standard formal writing protocols .

     As regards all writing submitted in  this course, please keep the following in mind. If on occasion use is made of the ideas or words of someone else in one's writing, then the source(s) of those ideas and/or words must be cited; that is, when appropriate, papers must be fully documented  in MLA format (you must cite sources--using footnotes, endnotes, or parenthetical documentation, which include specific page numbers keyed to particular passages in your text, and complete bibliographical information). WRITTEN TEXTS NOT MEETING ALL OF THESE REQUIREMENTS WILL NOT BE READ AND WILL NOT RECEIVE CREDIT.  

N.B. Academic Integrity is the cornerstone of higher education and is central to the ideals of this course and the university . Cheating is strictly prohibited and devalues the degree that you are working on. As a member of the NJIT community, it is your responsibility to protect your educational investment by knowing and following the academic code of integrity whose policy can be found at:  http://www5.njit.edu/policies/sites/policies/files/academic-integrity-code.pdf .        Please note that it is my professional obligation and responsibility to report any academic misconduct to the Dean of Students Office . Any student found in violation of the code by cheating, plagiarizing or using any online software inappropriately will result in disciplinary action. This may include a failing grade of F, and/or suspension or dismissal from the university. If you have any questions about the code of Academic Integrity, please contact the Dean of Students Office at  [email protected] .

Papers must be submitted to the instructor via Canvas, as Word for Windows (preferably Word 2003) attachments, using a proper identifying subject line.

^ Term Paper Announcement :   Consists of 1) a descriptive paper title, and a subtitle to show focus and specificity, 2) a one-sentence thesis statement that includes the point of your argument, the breadth of that argument, and the argument’s significant concepts and details, 3) a detailed, step-by-step description of the writing or argumentative strategy to be employed in your paper, 4) a bibliography  of all sources both primary and secondary in MLA format and alphabetized. For the purposes of this assignment, use must be made of at least three secondary research sources (one of them hard copy) excluding assigned readings, textbooks, encyclopedias and dictionaries.    

A description and samples of the Term Paper Announcement are available from the course Canvas homepage.

^^ Term Paper :   Consists of: 1) a descriptive paper title, and a subtitle to show focus and specificity, 2) a full-length essay, 3) a bibliography in MLA format and alphabetized. For the purposes of this assignment, use must be made of at least three secondary research sources (one of them hard copy) excluding assigned readings, textbooks, encyclopedias and dictionaries.       N.B.:   While one research paper source must be hard copy--and there is no substitute for physically going to a library to do research--a downloaded article from one of the NJIT Library's databases can be considered as a hard copy source (it is best to check with the instructor about the suitability of such an article)

Samples of the Term Paper are available from the course Canvas homepage.

COURSE GRADE

Week 1:    Kovach and Rosenstiel, Elements of Journalism  pp. 1-19, 22-26, 47-61, 65-68.

Week 2:    Kovach and Rosenstiel, Elements of Journalism pp. 97-116, 169-92, 213-39.

Week 3:    Kerrane and Yagoda, “Preface" and “Introduction" to The Art of Fact ; "Introduction" to Let Us Now Praise Famous Men ; Hersey, Hiroshima excerpt (1946); Heinz, "Death of a Racehorse" (1949).

Week 4:    Baldwin, “Notes of a Native Son”(1955).

Week 5:    Breslin, “It’s an Honor” (1963); Didion “Los Angeles Notebook” (1965, 67, 68).

Week 6:     Thompson, Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gang excerpt (1965).

Week 7:     Herr “Kesanh” (1969).

Week 8:     Davidson, from Loose Change (1977)

Week 9:     Simpson, “Tienanmen Square” (1989); Kincaid, “On First Seeing England” (1991).  

Week 10:   Brown, “One Spoonful at a Time” (2006); Gawande, “Letting Go” (2010).

Week 11:   Diaz, “The Money” (2011); Fan, “How My Mother and I Became Chinese Propaganda” (2020). 

Week 12:    Parham, “ TikTok and the Evolution of Digital Blackface” (2020); Roberts, “Wonder Women: The Fight for Female Superheroes in Hollywood” (2020).

Week 13:   Alexander, “The Trayvon Generation” (2020); Tabios, “A Letter from Napa Valley” (2020).

Weeks 14&15: REPORTS ON TERM PAPERS. 

ABBREVIATIONS  FOR MARKING PAPERS Key: Abbreviation - Meaning

SUGGESTED PROTOCOL FOR TEAM ORAL REPORTS

Introduction

Spokesperson for group (preferably Speaker #1 or #4) puts up first viewgraph (topic of report) and defines:

A. Topic of the group report B. Introduces self and other members of the team (both first and last names)--Viewgraph #2 C. Explains briefly how the topic has been broken down and what aspect of the topic each speaker will address. D. Introduces Speaker #1.

Speaker #1:

A. Thanks spokesperson B. Restates his/her particular topic (with viewgraph) C. Addresses topic (with viewgraphs) D. Introduces Speaker #2

Speaker #2:

A. Thanks Speaker #1 B. Restates his/her particular topic (with viewgraph) C. Addresses topic (with viewgraphs) D. Introduces Speaker #3

Speaker #3:

A. Thanks Speaker #2 B. Restates his/her particular topic (with viewgraph) C. Addresses topic (with viewgraphs) D. Introduces Speaker #4

Speaker #4:

A. Thanks Speaker #3 B. Restates his/her particular topic (with viewgraph) C. Addresses topic (with viewgraphs) D. Asks for Questions (or reintroduces Spokesperson)

Question and Answer Period:

A. Spokesperson asks if there are questions B. Recognizes questioner and directs question to appropriate member of team C. Allows any other member of team to comment D. After last question, thanks audience.

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Trending Post : 12 Powerful Discussion Strategies to Engage Students

10 of the Best Literary Analysis Activities to Elevate Thinking

Inside this Post: Ready to elevate your literary analysis lessons? This post is full of engaging and effective activities to help students master literary analysis topics.

Literary analysis has become the beating heart of English classes around the world. When students read a text, we want them to peel back the layers one by one, appreciating the deeper meaning that lies within each sentence. As English teachers, many of us connect with texts easily and persevere through complex literature naturally. For our students, this process is not always as enjoyable.

In this post, you’ll find suggestions for elevating thinking with middle and high school students. These ideas can be used with paired or individual texts and can be differentiated to reach a variety of learners.

Engaging and Effective Literary Analysis Activities

Literary analysis elements are best when they are engaging and elevate thinking without frustrating students. I’ve played around with different approaches, and these are the key elements that resonate most with students.

1. Thinking Aloud

One of the best feelings as a teacher is knowing you have an entire class full of teenagers engaged. It’s amazing how every single student in a classroom is in tune with think alouds. Something about making thinking transparent challenges students of all readiness levels. With literary analysis lessons, I love providing think alouds with the whole class. Whether we do this via face to face instruction or by creating a short video for virtual classrooms, we have to model our thinking.

Here’s an example with “All the world’s a stage” from William Shakespeare’s As You Like It …

This speech, at first, seems complicated. But, Shakespeare is talking about the world being a stage, and I think there is something deeper to what he is saying. Let’s go back again and look for clues. The men and women are players on the stage. He writes that they have their exits and entrances. I’m trying to visualize that in my head now. The world is a stage, the people are actors, and when they walk on and off the stage, that is their theatrical entrance and exit. Now that I understand he is using this speech as an extended metaphor, I wonder why would Shakespeare is choosing to compare these two things?

When modeling literary analysis, we can break down our thought process. If we write a written response, we can scaffold by color coding our thoughts in order to highlight the necessary critical thinking steps.

• First, acknowledge what is confusing or uncertain about the text. What might we be missing as readers?
• Second, make observations.
• Third, apply reading strategies (in this case, I used visualizing).
• Last, teach students to ask questions that probe at the deeper meaning and reason for the writing.

2. Graphic Organizers

Graphic organizers are one of my go-to strategies for elevating thinking . We can use them to differentiate and to guide students as we work in small groups. I like to keep a variety of literary analysis graphic organizers for any text on hand so that I can be responsive. If students show a need to work on analyzing a specific literary element – characterization, plot, theme, conflict, etcetera – I use a graphic organizer as we read a text or excerpt together, modeling my thinking. Then, students can practice using the same organizer in small groups, partners, or independently.

Literary analysis consists of asking a bunch of questions to lead students to deeper thinking, and graphic organizers are a bridge that walks students down that path of purposeful questioning.

Grab this print and digital literary analysis graphic organizer for analyzing song lyrics – one of secondary students’ favorite texts to pick apart!

Nothing grabs a student’s attention like an image! Visuals are amazing tools for introducing literary analysis skills. I always begin my literary analysis unit with pictures. Using an image, we can quickly show students how to differentiate between summarizing and analyzing . Then, we can walk them through the steps of acknowledging what we might be missing, making observations, applying reading strategies, and questioning for deeper meaning.

Consider using images from a variety of sources. We can try historical images, political cartoons, famous paintings, graphic novels, wordless picture books, advertisements, or even just regular photographs.

I even work this type of analytical thinking into my vocabulary activities ! Students get used to interpreting photos and using textual evidence to support their thinking.

4. One Pagers

One pagers are one of my favorite literary analysis activities. In order to make them meaningful, I incorporate scaffolding . So, students have access to standards-aligned goals and questions that prompt their responses to the text. Choice helps as well. We can allow students to choose digital or traditional , response angles, and even texts.

In terms of literary analysis benefits, we can really focus on asking students to cite textual evidence to track a universal theme. While doing so, students can draw conclusions about how literary elements work together or how they provide tension to impact a reader’s overall takeaway.

5. Colorful Charts

Mood and tone can be tricky for students to analyze. So that they can understand the difference between them but also so that they see how mood and tone work in tandem, I began using an equalizer metaphor . Students can use color and amplification to analyze how mood and tone change throughout a literary work. By creating a visual representation, there’s a direct connection between the mood and the storyline.

How does setting impact mood , and how does mood impact the conflict in the story?

For instance, the quiet beauty of the Capulet garden sets the stage for a romantic balcony scene, but the noisy bustle of the lewd fighting in the Verona streets helps to define the conflict and tension between the two feuding families.

With tone , how does the author’s word choice and sentence structure in each section convey his or her attitude in the work?

As we study the amplification of tone in the play Romeo and Juliet , we see a consistent change from light-hearted comedy to an intensely poetic and tragic seriousness. Over the course of the play, one might say that Shakespeare’s juxtaposition creates an overall sympathetic tone toward the star-crossed lovers.

6. Get Moving

One of the issues when it comes to citing evidence in a literary analysis essay is finding relevant support. Sometimes, it seems like the lines students select from literature are completely disconnected from what they are writing. That may be because they don’t truly understand how their thesis connects to their main points or how their main points connect to the evidence. For some students, there are too many degrees of separation!

A kinesthetic option to address this issue involves Post-Its (or colored text boxes if you are doing this digitally) and a t-chart. At the top of the paper (use big paper or a white board if you can do this together in the classroom!), write the analytical point. What conclusion can students draw about characters, setting, or another literary element that would support their thesis statement?

Under that, label the T-Chart as “Relevant” and “Off Topic.” Then, you have some options.

BASIC: You identify support for students in advance and have them sort the support based on its relevance. Could they use it to analyze the text, or is it off topic?

ADVANCE: Ask students to find examples of relevant and off-topic lines from the text.

A MIXTURE:   Provide students with a handful of lines they can sort into relevant and off-topic categories, and then ask them to find a couple more examples on their own.

To increase the engagement factor, use some washi tape on the floor in the shape of whatever makes the most sense – a character outline for analyzing character, a house for analyzing setting, a circle for analyzing a universal theme. Then, have students stick their Post-It notes inside or outside of the shape. Inside indicates that the evidence is relevant, and outside means it’s off-topic.

7. Children’s Books

We don’t always think to use picture books with older students , but they are one of my absolute favorite ways to scaffold literary analysis! Because picture books are short, we can cover an entire (and often complex) story in a short period of time. And, we can continually refer back to that text throughout the school year. Because picture books are accessible for all students, they will remember sharing the story together, and you can really make significant strides with whole-class discussions and small group lessons.

Try using picture books to teach Notice and Note signposts, language, aesthetics, and theme . One of my favorite ways to use picture books is teaching students to analyze how dialogue impacts decisions, propels action, and develops characters. For example, in the book Elbow Grease , the protagonist is motivated to participate in a race for which he is the underdog simply because some crass comments from his friends make him angry. This really is the turning point in the story, which makes it convenient to analyze how dialogue can lead to decisions and actions that change the course of a storyline.

8. Short Films

For a thousand and one reasons, I adore short films. They’re short (obvious, I know), which makes them ideal for modeling and mini lessons. Plus, they are visually captivating and apply to a wide age range. And, generally, they hold quite a bit of depth and leave room for a variety of interpretations.

During first quarter with ninth graders, I built in a yearly routine of watching short films during our literary analysis unit and having students complete their first full analytical essay. It’s fun. I can model using a short film I enjoy. Then, I get to read a wide range of responses from students who choose different texts. To scaffold for struggling writers, I suggest a few short films I am very familiar with; this way, I can guide them if they get stuck or confused.

You can also build in short films by using them with poetry for paired text analysis .

9. Reading Strategies

One of the building blocks of literary analysis is having a good foundation in apply reading strategies. It’s fun to model what readers do. We can show students how analyzing texts and re-reading for deeper meaning helps us with writing and then ask students to practice those skills.

For instance, when students begin to understand that authors have a purposeful craft that impacts their reading experience, it empowers them to pick that craft apart, studying the nuances of what makes it work. And, it gives them an advantage as authors themselves. They may think,  I remember how the author’s purposeful use of short, staccato sentences and onomatopoeias increased the suspense during that scene. Maybe I should use those techniques in this part of my story to add an emotional element for my readers.

These are some of the graphic organizers I’ve used to scaffold reading strategy work with the whole class, and then students can transfer those skills to small group or independent practice, using the same organizer if necessary.

10. Social Media Activities

Social media is everywhere. We might as well use it as a relevant option for analyzing literature! One of my favorites is booksnaps , and I tie in Snapchat by having them take a photo of part of the text they want to analyze. Then, they add interpretations, images, and text as well as a caption with a more detailed analysis. I call these Snap-a-Books.  I also created a Spot-a-Book analysis option, reminiscent of Spotify playlists. Students can create playlists relevant to character analysis, setting analysis, conflict analysis, and more!

And, that’s ten! I hope you’ve found some meaningful literary analysis activities to spark creative, critical thinking in your classroom.

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