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Literary Journalism
Literary Journalism

Collection

Writing from observation, about people, places, and things in the present. A type of creative nonfiction.

Creative Nonfiction
Creative Nonfiction

Collection

Literary writing about real people, places, and things.

Complete archive

Literary Journalism

Writing from observation, about people, places, and things in the present. A type of creative nonfiction.

Featured
Susan Orlean, "The American Man, Age Ten"
Susan Orlean, "The American Man, Age Ten"

This classic essay takes the form of the journalistic profile piece—usually used to write about “important” and “unusual” people—and turns it on its head, using it instead to delve into the life of someone utterly ordinary: a “typical” ten-year-old American boy.

Joseph Mitchell, "The Old House at Home"
Joseph Mitchell, "The Old House at Home"

Joseph Mitchell’s classic piece of literary journalism, published in 1940, paints a vivid portrait of a neighborhood saloon in New York’s Lower East Side.

Susan Orlean, "Shortcuts"
Susan Orlean, "Shortcuts"

Journalist Susan Orlean paints a portrait of her neighborhood hair salon.

E. B. White, "Here is New York"
E. B. White, "Here is New York"

E. B. White’s classic essay published in 1948, one of the most famous literary essays about New York City.

Joseph Mitchell, "Professor Sea Gull"
Joseph Mitchell, "Professor Sea Gull"

Joseph Mitchell’s famous 1942 profile of Joe Gould, the Greenwich Village eccentric who claimed to be writing a voluminous “Oral History of Our Time.”

Susan Orlean, "The Maui Surfer Girls"
Susan Orlean, "The Maui Surfer Girls"

Susan Orleans profiles a group of free-living teenage surfer girls in Hawaii.

Rick Bragg, "In a Louisiana Bayou Town, Uncle Pat is the Law"
Rick Bragg, "In a Louisiana Bayou Town, Uncle Pat is the Law"

Journalist Rick Bragg paints a vivid picture of the life of a small-town policemen in the rural South.

Rick Bragg, "Savoring a Sweet Taste of Southern Summers"
Rick Bragg, "Savoring a Sweet Taste of Southern Summers"

Journalist Rick Bragg writes an ode to sweet iced tea, the archetypal Southern drink.

Peter Hessler, "River Town"
Peter Hessler, "River Town"

Rivertown is Peter Hessler's memoir of living and teaching in rural Sichuan province as a Peace Corps volunteer in the 1990s. It is one of the most widely read accounts in the English-speaking world of living in China as a foreigner.

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