Editor’s note

We’re all limited by our own experiences.

Our morality prevents us from becoming a serial killer. Our muscles prevent us from ever attempting Mount Everest. Our time in history prevents us from knowing what it is to ride along with Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters.

Truman Capote, Jon Krakauer and Tom Wolfe are just some of the writers who’ve tried to bring us into unknown circumstances.

Good writing introduces us to places we’ve never been, to situations we’ve never experienced, to people we’ve never met.

Literary journalism is the term given to the kind of good writing that does this through verified facts. The stories in this genre stem not from fantasy, but from actual occurrences. The stories take on something complex as the human condition in modern society, and then try to say something about it through a narrative. Through people, place, thing. Through beginning, middle, end. Through subject, verb, object.

The genre usurps the best of fiction and uses it to explain our own world in more intimate corners. Facts and figures give us one aspect of reality, but stories take us to places our imaginations can’t accurately create on their own. We may never live through a bout of cancer, a tsunami, a war zone. But compassion calls us to try to understand what it’s like for someone who has.

The pieces in this section keep this philosophy in mind. The label of travel story, personal essay, profile or creative nonfiction can be slapped onto them. They all help us understand things outside ourselves.

Stacey Coburn
Click Editor

More Articles

Think globally, drink locally

What's brewing (at the Ithaca Beer Company). Written by Carly Chamberlin.

There is no corruption in Russia

Muckraking in Russia. Written by Kate Sheppard.

He's the man

Steven Brown breaks stereotypes as he teaches first grades at Caroline Elementary. Written by Sarah Hofius.

Treading lightly

A look at a sustainable community’s way of life in the EcoVillage. Written by Vanessa Schneider.