Nieman Narrative Journalism Conference
On a late fall weekend in 2001, the Nieman Program on Narrative Journalism convened its first conference. More than 800 journalists traveled to Cambridge, Massachusetts to take part in three days of interactive seminars, lectures and readings with many of the nation’s leading practitioners. By the end of the conference, there had been 26 seminars, four plenary sessions, and three group readings, and it is from words spoken at these sessions that Nieman Reports compiled the report that follows. — Melissa Ludtke
Emily Hiestand is a poet and a visual artist as well as a magical essayist. A lot of what she talked about can be summarized as thinking like an artist while writing about true things. One of her suggestions was to take a poetry workshop or an art class, not to become a poet or visual artist, but just to learn how to see the world through an artist’s eyes.
One of the most valuable things I got from this session was to move that knowledge from the damp basement of my brain up closer to where the action is—the living room of my brain, maybe. The most valuable thing I learned, though, was how to bring the subject or feeling of your article into the language of your article. —Madeline Bodin, a freelance science writer.
