Stories Can Save Us - by Matt Tullis

About the Book

"Great journalism relies on a narrative arc to engage and inform the reader. Stories Can Save Us looks at how the best reporters and writers craft narrative literary journalism. Journalist Matt Tullis uses the material he gathered in the more than seventy-five interviews he conducted with the best narrative and literary journalists in the country through his podcast, Gangrey: The Podcast, to show how these professionals conceive and write such compelling stories. Through his podcast, Tullis interviewed Pulitzer Prizewinners, National Magazine Award winners, and many authors of books of narrative journalism, including New York Times best-selling authors. He also spoke with reporters of different races and backgrounds, styles and strengths-journalists who have been published in the most prestigious newspapers and magazines-to ask: How do they find story ideas? How do they reach out to potential story subjects? What are their interview strategies? How do they conduct other information gathering? How do they come up with their amazing and enticing leads? How do they develop story structure? How does the story change in the revision process? How do they make their stories great and make them into the types of stories that people read and talk about for years? Through Tullis's conversations with these top-tier journalists, we are offered a window into their methods and practices as well as the motivations behind great journalism and how it speaks to the cultural climate of its time. Tullis's goal was to expand the power and potential of what amazing reporting and narrative writing can do, believing that it can literally change a reader's mood and, possibly, a reader's life"--

Book Synopsis

Great journalism relies on a narrative arc to engage and inform the reader. Stories Can Save Us looks at how the best reporters and writers craft narrative literary journalism. Journalist Matt Tullis uses the material he gathered in the more than seventy-five interviews he conducted with the best narrative and literary journalists in the country through his podcast, Gangrey: The Podcast, to show how these professionals conceive and writesuch compelling stories.

Through his podcast, Tullis interviewed Pulitzer Prizewinners, National Magazine Awardwinners, and many authors of books of narrative journalism, including New York Times best-selling authors. He also spoke with reporters of different races and backgrounds, styles and strengths--journalists who have been published in the most prestigious newspapers and magazines--to ask: How do they find story ideas? How do they reach out to potential story subjects? What are their interviewstrategies? How do they conduct other information gathering? How do they come up with their amazing and enticing leads? How do they develop story structure? How does the story change in the revision process? How do they make their stories great and make them into the types of stories that people read and talk about for years?

Through Tullis's conversations with these top-tier journalists, we are offered a window into their methods and practices as well as the motivations behind great journalism and how it speaks to the cultural climate of its time. Tullis's goal was to expand the power and potential of what amazing reporting and narrative writing can do, believing that it can literally change a reader's mood and, possibly, a reader's life.

Review Quotes

Because of this book, I've learned things from writers I've never read. . . . The best narrative nonfiction transcends subject matter and publishing platform. Sometimes it takes a book like this to remind us of that.--Jacqueline Marino "author of White Coats: Three Journeys through an American Medical School"

About the Author

MATT TULLIS was an experienced journalist and journalism professor at Fairfield University, and the author of Running With Ghosts: A Memoir of Surviving Childhood Cancer. As a freelance writer, Tullis wrote for The Daily Beast, SB Nation Longform, Nieman Storyboard, Cleveland Magazine, and many other publications.