The Narrative Journal

OnPoint Radio Series on the Conference

Press Release From On Point

Earlier this month, some of the country's best writers met in
Cambridge, Massachusetts for the 2003 Nieman Conference on
Narrative Journalism to share their best work. As part of a
continuing tradition, On Point brings you a selection of their stories
from across the country, delivered in the authors' own voices. The
conference was organized by Harvard University's Nieman
Foundation for Journalism.

In Part I of the series we hear from New Yorker writer Susan Orlean,
UC Berkeley's Cynthia Gorney, author and journalist Adrianne
Nicole LeBlanc, and Pulitzer Prize winning journalists Thomas
French, Sonia Nazario, Jacqui Banasynski and Victor Merina.

In Part II of the series we hear from independent broadcast
journalist and four-time Peabody Award winner Jay Allison,
Washington Post's Anne Hull, director of the Neiman Program on
Narrative Journalism Mark Kramer, co-founder of Mother Jones
Magazine Adam Hochschild, Pulitzer Prize-winning author
Samantha Power, writer Arlie Hochschild and Columbia University's
Patricia Williams.

Saturday Readings

By Jesse Millner

Reporting from the Nieman Conference here in snow-bound Boston. The presenters have been fabulous, and I just listened in on a great reading that included Cynthia Gorney, Melissa Fay Greene, and Barry Newman. In less than a half hour, I heard the story of a mother dying from alcoholism, a mining disaster in Nova Scotia in 1958 and a cool piece about a man’s fascination with the bugs of Florida. I was particularly inspired by Gorney’s piece about her mother, and the way she did what all good writing does: the abstraction of dying from drink became the horrible and real specific thing of her mother dying of liver disease. Great stuff.

Jesse Millner is an English Instructor at Florida Gulf Coast University.