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

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Literary writing about real people, places, and things.

Complete archive

Posts in character profiles

Susan Orlean, "The Maui Surfer Girls"

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

Joseph Mitchell, “Mazie"

Joseph Mitchell’s classic profile of a famous denizen of the 1930s Bowery.

Yiyun Li, "The Man Who Eats"

Novelist Yiyun Li writes about her grandfather, his times, and his relationship with food.

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