Join leading reporters, authors, and new media figures from all over to discuss developments and best practices that build on the 40-year heritage of narrative journalism. We're sorry, but registration is now closed as the conference has sold out. Please join our mailing list to stay informed of details for the 2014 conference.
The Power of Narrative Sponsors:Boston UniversityPoynter
Boston University College of Communication
640 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston, MA 02215
Contact Lisa Bassett in the Journalism Department with your questions at email@example.com.
The Power of Narrative Conference has convened in several places and under several names since its founding at Boston University in 1998. But our mission remains constant as storytelling journalism goes digital: helping narrative journalists strengthen their craft, following the highest ethical practices and imparting the down-to-earth humanity that characterizes the genre.
Last year, we quickly sold out all 300 seats to writers, filmmakers, podcasters, multimedia producers and graphic journalists. This year, leading print journalists will join new media figures from here and abroad to discuss fresh developments that build upon the 40-year heritage of narrative journalism. The conference talks are stimulating, sophisticated, practical and relevant, aimed at mid-career practitioners intent on broadening their work. The vigorous Q & A sessions that follow our talks show us that we're on-target. And, at session and meal breaks you'll meet speakers and new colleagues and share ideas and aspirations.
At its founding, we called it 'Aboard the Narrative Train.' When it moved across the Charles River to Harvard University, it was 'The Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism.' The conference returned to its roots at Boston University in 2010 and became 'The Power of Narrative.' Throughout its evolution, major publication editors, niche content journalists, book writers, adventurous individual practitioners and nonfiction writers in many media — have filled our seats. They have learned from the best narrative writers, editors and publishers including — Calvin Trillin, Nora Ephron, Norman Mailer, Sy Hersh, Gay Talese, Alma Guillermoprieto, David Halberstam, Ken Burns, Susan Orlean, David Finkel, Hank Stuever, Anne Hull, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, Kara Oehler and Adam Hochschild, among others.
Over the years, our presentations have inspired thousands of nuanced, rich, narrative articles, multimedia projects, books and films. Conference contacts have grown into creative collaborations and new organizations. The Power of Narrative is an ongoing community with many returning often since the '90s. We hope you'll join us.
Mark Kramer is writer-in-residence at Boston University. He was writer-in-residence in the American Studies Program at Smith College (1980-1990) and writer-in-residence and founding director of the Nieman Program on Narrative Journalism at Harvard University (2001-2007). He's written for the New York Times Sunday Magazine, National Geographic, The Atlantic Monthly and many other periodicals. He's co-author of two leading textbook/readers on narrative nonfiction: Telling True Stories and Literary Journalism. He's written four additional books: Mother Walter and the Pig Tragedy, Three Farms, Invasive Procedures, and Travels with a Hungry Bear. He's currently at work on a book about writing narrative nonfiction. He's the founding director of this conference, and has planned most of its 13 years of sessions. He also teaches a 'kitchen workshop' from his home for for midcareer writers working with longform projects.
Breakable Rules for Literary Journalists
Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Rosalind Bentley has covered everything from the trial of a Ku Klux Klansman in Mississippi, to the hunt for a serial killer in Georgia. She covered the election of Nelson Mandela from South Africa, work that won first place in editorial writing for the Exceptional Merit Media Awards of the National Women's Political Caucus. While a reporter at The Star Tribune in Minneapolis, she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for her coverage of race relations in Minnesota. She has also written for Essence magazine.
Alan Chin was born and raised in New York City’s Chinatown. Since 1996, he has worked in China, the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt, and many other places in the Middle East and Central Asia. In the US, Alan has explored the South, following the historic trail of the civil rights movement and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, covered the 2008 presidential campaign, and the Occupy Wall Street movement. He is a contributing photographer to Newsweek and The New York Times, and member of Facing Change: Documenting America (FCDA), and an editor at Newsmotion.org.
Annie Correal is the editor of Cowbird, a “public library of human experience.” Since Cowbird launched in December 2011, Correal has edited content, shaped Cowbird's editorial strategy and launched its first media partnerships. She also manages Cowbird's community of storytellers, which today includes more than 20,000 authors from around the world. Before taking the helm at Cowbird, Correal contributed to The New York Times, This American Life, NPR and other media outlets. She has spoken about journalism and the rise of powerful, personal storytelling on the Web at the Tribeca Film Festival and elsewhere. Correal is a founder and consulting editor at Radio Ambulante, a Spanish-language narrative podcast. Her reporting on the Gulf Oil Spill for NPR Latino USA received the top award for an audio story at the Ippies Awards (Independent Journalism Awards) in 2011. This year she was part of the team that created the hour-long episode on This American Life, "What Happened at Dos Erres," winner of the silver award at the 2012 Third Coast International Audio Festival.
Maisie Crow is a freelance photographer and filmmaker. In 2012, her short film, Half-Lives: The Chernobyl Workers Now won the Overseas Press Club Award for online video. She was also nominated for a News and Documentary Emmy for her Web project, A Life Alone, which focuses on the emotional angst of an elderly widower. Her most recent film, The Last Clinic, tells the story of the only remaining abortion clinic in Mississippi. Her work focuses on the struggles and personal stories of everyday people. An adjunct professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, Crow's work has been recognized by World Press Photo, Pictures of the Year International and Best of Photojournalism.
As deputy managing editor of El País, Spain's largest daily, Borja Echevarría led the newspaper's digital approach to journalism. Today, El Pais is the world's most-visited spanish language news site. With a background in reporting on science, social issues and sports in publications such as El Mundo, Echevarría also cofounded Soitu.es, a news site that won two Online News Association Awards. He is a 2013 Nieman and Berkman Fellow.
Porter Fox is a freelance travel and fiction writer whose stories have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Outside, The Believer, Best American Travel Writing, The Literary Review and many other publications. He founded and edits the online literary travel writing journal Nowhere Magazine, and teaches at and assists with art collectives in New York. A seasoned ocean sailor, he is writing a travel narrative of his journeys along the Maine coastline.
Ann Friedman is a columnist for New York magazine's website and for The Columbia Journalism Review. The former executive editor of GOOD magazine, she and her colleagues produced Tomorrow, a crowdfunded narrative publication, after they were fired en masse. She created the popular animated-GIF blog Real Talk From Your Editor and curates the work of women writers on LadyJournos!. Last year CJR named her one of 20 Women to Watch.
Dan Grossman is a print, broadcast and Web journalist who reports on environmental policy and climate change. He regularly writes for The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Discover, Audubon and Scientific American; produces radio pieces for The World, Living On Earth, Weekend Edition and Soundprint; and writes for NewsWatch, a blog on National Geographic’s website. His most recent project is the e-book Deep Water. Published by TED Books, Deep Water is a 16,000-word narrative about climate change scientists, with interactive photos, video, charts and in-depth explanations.
David G. Hartwell has thrice won the Hugo Award for editing science fiction and fantasy. Since 1995, he has been a senior editor at TOR/Forge Books, one of the world’s top science fiction publishing companies. He has served as an editor or adviser for numerous major publishers, including Timescape, his own imprint at Simon & Schuster/Pocket Books. He helped found the Philip K. Dick Award. In addition to editing numerous science fiction novels, Hartwell edits and publishes his own science fiction anthologies, most notably Year’s Best SF and Year’s Best Fantasy. He is also the co-founder and longtime reviews editor for The New York Review of Science Fiction and writes literary criticism in science fiction.
Laurie Hertzel is currently Books Editor for the Minneapolis Star Tribune. She was a news editor and narrative writing coach there for many years, and has taught journalism at The Ohio State University and at Nieman conferences for writers and editors. Her recent book, News To Me: Adventures of an Accidental Journalist, won a Reader’s Choice Award at the Minnesota Book Awards. As a reporter, Hertzel has worked from Russia, Cuba and Eastern Europe.
Adam Hochschild is a writer and was honored in 2012 for his work by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He co-founded Mother Jones magazine and has written seven books, including the memoir Half the Way Home and the historical narratives Bury the Chains and King Leopold’s Ghost. He has been a finalist for the National Book Award and (twice) for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His most recent book, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize-winning To End All Wars, focuses on the First World War and its opponents. His writings have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Nation, Harper’s, The Atlantic, and Granta. He teaches journalism at the University of California at Berkeley.
Charles Homans is the executive editor of The Atavist, a publisher of original narrative nonfiction for tablets. He is a special correspondent for The New Republic and was previously the features editor of Foreign Policy, an editor at Washington Monthly, and a newspaper and public radio reporter in Washington, Wyoming, and Alaska's Aleutian Islands. He has also written for The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Columbia Journalism Review, and many other publications, and has been anthologized in Best American Science Writing.
Tracy Kidder is the Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning author of The Soul of a New Machine and seven other books, most recently Strength in What Remains. Originally focusing on American work, technology, and social organization, he's shifted to reporting on development in high-poverty countries, as in Mountains Beyond Mountains. He was a contributing editor at The Atlantic Monthly, and he writes for The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Granta. In 2010, Kidder was the first A. M. Rosenthal Writer-In-Residence at the Kennedy School at Harvard.
John Knight is a co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of the now-defunct Once Magazine, a long-form photojournalism monthly, published on the iPad. After publishing the magazine from 2010-2011, he and his team decided to close the doors and pursue other interests. He currently lives in New York where he works as a writer, editor and web producer at various publications and book publishers.
Dick Lehr is an author and professor of journalism at Boston University. He previously spent nearly two decades at The Boston Globe, where he was member of the newspaper's investigative Spotlight Team, a projects reporter and a magazine writer. Lehr was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in investigative reporting and has won numerous journalism awards. He is coauthor most recently of Whitey: The Life of America's Most Notorious Mob Boss. His previous book, The Fence: a Police Cover-up Along Boston's Racial Divide, which examines police brutality in Boston and the blue wall of silence, was an Edgar Award finalist. He is the co-author of three other books, including Black Mass, a New York Times bestseller that chronicles the FBI's corrupt ties to Whitey Bulger which is being adapted into a film to be directed by Barry Levinson, Lehr has been a Visiting Journalist at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University and a John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University.
Kelly McEvers is NPR’s foreign correspondent based in Beirut, Lebanon. McEvers has spent the past two years embedded with protesters in the Arab Spring uprisings, culminating in a 2012 Peabody Award for coverage of the conflict in Syria. McEvers has covered stories across the Middle East, the former Soviet states and Southeast Asia. She began her journalism career in 1997 as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, and during that time spent almost a year among female gang members for the Tribune’s Sunday magazine. Her radio work has appeared on The World, This American Life and Hearing Voices. Her writings have appeared in publications such as The New York Times Magazine, Esquire and Foreign Policy. McEvers has been a fellow at Johns Hopkins University School of International Studies and has taught at universities around the world.
Nick Mills is an Associate Professor at Boston University, where he has taught journalism for over twenty years and has served in various advisory and managerial roles. He is an international strategic communications consultant and trainer, and has worked in diverse environments including Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Colombia, Panama, Indonesia and Malaysia. He is the author of Combat Photographer (Boston Publishing) and KARZAI (Wiley) and has published numerous articles about Afghanistan on Huffington Post and Foreign Policy.
Mills is President of the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, and President of the Upper Dam Camp Owners Association.
Jina Moore is a freelance multimedia reporter and a 2013 New Media Fellow of the International Reporting Project. Since 2008, she has been reporting from post-conflict Africa. She is a regular correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor; she has also published with Boston Review, Foreign Policy, Newsweek, The Nation, the Columbia Journalism Review, Harvard Magazine, Best American Science Writing (2009), and for PRI's The World and World Vision Report. Her work has won the Elizabeth Neuffer Memorial Prize Gold Medal, an Ochberg Fellowship of the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, the Hillman Foundation's Sidney Award, and annual grants from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. She is nonfiction editor at Guernica Magazine and the editor of Dart Society Reports, an online human rights magazine published by the Dart Society.
Amy Ellis Nutt is a reporter for The Star-Ledger in Newark, New Jersey, specializing in enterprise stories. Her 2010 series “The Wreck of the Lady Mary” won a 2011 Pulitzer Prize. Her series “The Accidental Artist” was a finalist for a Pulitzer in 2009 and was turned into a book, Shadows as Bright as Glass: The Remarkable Story of One Man's Journey from Brain Trauma to Artistic Triumph. A 2004 Nieman Fellow, Nutt has also written for Sports Illustrated. During Hurricane Sandy, Nutt did not leave the Star-Ledger newsroom for several days. She teaches at the Columbia Journalism School.
Nutt on On Point talking about her experience surviving Hurricane Sandy
Amy O'Leary is a reporter for The New York Times who uses her experience as a digital journalist to think through online approaches to her stories at their conception. A former multimedia producer and online editor for the Times, Amy is fluent in a number of methods for connecting stories with a digital audience, applying principles from her time working in public radio both as a freelancer and at PRI's This American Life.
The Reckoning: America and the World A Decade After 9/11
Flipped: How Private Equity Dealmakers Can Win While Their Companies Lose
Sexual Harassment in Online Gaming Stirs Anger
Watch a Creepy Guy Smell Someone
Erin Polgreen is the founder of Symbolia: The Tablet Magazine of Illustrated Journalism and a comics journalism pioneer. Previously, Polgreen was managing director of The Media Consortium, where she worked on program development and learning labs for many media outlets. She coordinates the Media Ideation Fellowships, which help foster innovation among early career media professionals. (Illustration credit: Joyce Rice)
Poynter article on the Symbolia iPad app launch
Joseph Rodriguez is a preeminent social documentary photographer. He has documented the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, gang life in East Los Angeles, the tribal regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan in the wake of 9/11, the racial and cultural divisions in Sweden, and many other international projects. For the past seven years, Rodriguez has been working with individuals being released from prisons in California. He recently chronicled the reentry of former prisoner Jesse De La Cruz into society in his multimedia series Release From Darkness. He teaches at New York University and the International Center for Photography.
Noah Rosenberg is the founder, CEO and editor-in-chief of Narratively, a platform devoted to original and in-depth local stories with a global appeal. Previously, Rosenberg was a full-time freelancer for The New York Times in print, photography, and video, and he has also worked for CBS News' documentary production unit; reported on-camera for Channel One News; served as The Wall Street Journal's video correspondent and a writer/photographer from the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa; and was Digital Director for The Queens Courier newspaper group, where he pioneered the company's use of video and multimedia and was founding editor-in-chief of L.I.C. Courier Magazine. His work has also been featured by GQ and New York magazine, among other outlets, and he has worked on projects for Univision Interactive Media. Rosenberg was a 2012 fellow at the City University of New York's Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism.
Julian Rubinstein is an award-winning journalist, author and producer. His narrative non-fiction book, Ballad of the Whiskey Robber, was a winner or finalist of four national awards and a New York Times Editors’ Choice. His magazine work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, Details, Travel + Leisure and others and been collected in Best American Essays, Best American Sports Writing and Best American Crime Writing. He is also Web editor for the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma at Columbia Journalism School, from which he graduated. In 2011, with a team of journalists around the world, he founded Newsmotion.org, a global civic media storytelling initiative.
Since 2007, Sue Schardt has been the executive director of AIR, Inc, a tightly networked professional coalition of media-makers spanning 46 states and 20 countries worldwide, working to harness new technologies and drive the shift underway in public media. She is Executive Producer of Localore, an ambitious national production launched in September 2011 tapping multimedia producers to lead new experiments designed to carry public media to more Americans. She is a Director of the Distribution and Interconnect Committee on the NPR board and a long-standing DJ on WMBR in Cambridge, Mass.
Jeb Sharp is the producer of Public Radio International’s The World. Before that she was a reporter for the program, covering a wide variety of international stories. Her work has been honored by the Overseas Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, and the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma. Sharp was a 2006 Nieman Fellow.
Neil Shea is a lecturer in journalism at Boston University and an editor-at-large for The Virginia Quarterly Review. He was for several years a staff writer and contributing editor at National Geographic, where he wrote on wildfires in the American West, the Parisian Catacombs, and tribal conflict in the Horn of Africa. He has also written on Afghanistan and Iraq for several publications, including The American Scholar, Foreign Policy, and Stars and Stripes, where he was a war zone reporter. His writing has won gold and silver Lowell Thomas Awards for work in Ethiopia and Cuba and an award for environmental reporting from the Society of Environmental Journalists.
Ellen Ruppel Shell is professor and co-director of the Graduate Program in Science Journalism at Boston University, and a correspondent for The Atlantic. She is the author of three books, including most recently Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture. In addition to her work with The Atlantic, her narratives, essays and criticism have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Smithsonian, Discover, The Washington Post, Newsweek and Audubon Magazine, among dozens of other publications. She has spoken on a wide range of issues to audiences in Africa, the US and Europe, and on radio and television. She is currently completing a book on work for the Eamon Dolan imprint of Houghton Mifflin.
Richard Todd is a veteran magazine (Atlantic Monthly, New England Monthly) and book editor who works closely with Tracy Kidder and has edited such writers as Ann Patchett and Mark Kramer for over three decades. His essays and reportage have been published in The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, and The New York Times. The Chicago Tribune called his book The Thing Itself: On the Search for Authenticity "dazzling, beautifully crafted." His newly published work is Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction, co-written with Kidder. He is on the core faculty of Goucher College’s MFA program in Creative Nonfiction.
Beauregard Tromp is a seasoned newspaper journalist and television reporter. He’s a 2013 Nieman Fellow who has reported on conflicts, politics and social change across Africa. Tromp worked as the Africa Correspondent for several years for the South African Independent Newspaper group and most recently as a field producer for the pan African eNews Africa television station. He co-authored Hani: A Life Too Short with Janet Smith. In 2009, Tromp’s extensive reporting on the rise of xenophobia in his native South Africa won him the South African Newspaper Journalist of the Year Award. He has also won the Vodacom Journalist of the Year and CNN MultiChoice African Journalist of the Year awards. Visit his website.
Lissa Warren is vice president, senior director of publicity and acquiring editor at Da Capo Press—a member of the Perseus Books Group. Since 2003, she has been an adjunct professor at Emerson College, teaching graduate courses in Book Editing, Book Publicity, and Book Publishing. The author of The Savvy Author’s Guide to Book Publicity, she serves on the advisory council of Southern New Hampshire University’s M.F.A. writing program, is a Poetry Editor for Post Road, and blogs about publishing for the Huffington Post. Her memoir The Good Luck Cat is due from Lyons Press in Fall 2014.
Mitchell Zuckoff is the author of six books and a professor of journalism at Boston University, where he teaches feature writing and narrative journalism. A New York native, Zuckoff spent two decades as a reporter, much of that time with The Boston Globe, where he was an investigative reporter and roving national correspondent. His work has also appeared in The New Yorker, Fortune, and other major magazines. Zuckoff received the Winship/PEN New England Award for his 2011 book, Lost in Shangri-La. During his newspaper career, he was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in investigative reporting, and won the Distinguished Writing Award from the American Society of Newspaper Editors and the Livingston Award. His latest book, Frozen in Time, will be released on April 23.
We have negotiated discounted rates for conference attendees at two area hotels. Please call each hotel directly and mention the BU Narrative Conference to receive the contracted group rate.
Hyatt Regency Cambridge
575 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA 02139
Discounted rate of $149/night. Rooms must be booked by March 2 to ensure the discounted rate. Rooms book after this date will be based on availability at the Hotel's prevailing rate.
Holiday Inn Brookline
1200 Beacon Street, Brookline, MA 02446
Discounted rate of $149/night. All reservations will be accepted based upon availability, so we recommend that individuals call in advance to ensure accommodations.
500 Commonwealth Avenue at Kenmore Square
Discounted rate of $269/night. All reservations will be accepted based upon availability, so we recommend that individuals call in advance to ensure accommodations.
370 Commonwealth Avenue
39 Dalton Street
Fairmont Copley Plaza
138 St. James Avenue
Marriott Copley Place
110 Huntington Avenue
Hilton Boston Back Bay
40 Dalton Street
All sessions for April 5-7 will be at the School of Management, which is located on the Charles River Campus at 595 Commonwealth Ave., Boston, Mass.
Parking is limited around the College, so the best way to get there is by public transportation. The MBTA's Green Line (Boston College B Train) runs right pass the College so it is an easy and convenient way to travel.
Take a Boston College (B) train to the BU Blandford Street stop. After you get off the T, walk down Commonwealth Avenue to the School of Management Building.
» From the West
Take the Massachusetts Turnpike (I-90) to Exit 18 (Brighton/Cambridge). Pay toll, then follow the signs for Cambridge through the first light. Turn right at the next light, keeping the Doubletree Guest Suites Hotel on the right. Take Soldiers Field Road/Storrow Drive to the Kenmore Square exit. Turn right at the light at the end of the exit ramp. Stay to the left and continue on Commonwealth Avenue, but bear to your right as you go through Kenmore Square. Continue on Commonwealth Avenue through two lights. Saint Mary's Street and the Photonics Building will be at the third traffic light on the left. If you plan to park during the day, continue on Commonwealth Avenue, passing the entrance to the BU Bridge on your right (but stay on Commonwealth Avenue). At the second light after the bridge, take a right-hand turn onto Buick Street. Follow the road as it turns to the left to enter the Agganis Arena Parking Garage.
» From the North
Travel South on Route 95 to Route 93. Take Exit 26 to the Leverett Connector Bridge and exit directly onto Storrow Drive westbound to the Kenmore Square Exit (left exit). Use the right-hand side of the exit ramp for Kenmore Square (see directions above from Kenmore Square exit).
» From the South
Take Route 93/Route 3 North to Exit 26 (Storrow Drive/Back Bay). Go west on Storrow Drive; follow directions above to the Kenmore Square exit and the University.
Logan Airport is located about eight miles from Boston University.
» Taking the MBTA (subway) from the airport
Take the free Airport Shuttle Bus (which stops at all terminals) to the "T" station. Then take an Inbound train to Government Center (fare: $2.00). Change to the Green Line Outbound (or Westbound) and take a Boston College (B) train to the BU Blandford Street stop. After you get off the T, walk down Commonwealth Avenue.
Most major bus lines operate from South Station. A taxi from South Station will cost approximately $15 and will take about 30 minutes.
» Taking the MBTA (subway) from South Station
From the Trailways or Greyhound station, walk to South Station and take the Red Line Inbound (toward Harvard) to Park Street Station (fare $2.00). Transfer to the Green Line Outbound (see directions under "By Air").
Trains arrive in South Station and Back Bay. Follow South Station directions above (under "By Bus"). The Back Bay station is closer to campus, but involves a walk of several blocks to the Green "T" (MBTA subway) line.