Spend two involving and informative days with some of the best in the genre – Tracy Kidder, Susan Orlean, Donna Britt, Tom French, David Isay,Rick Bragg and many others listed below – discussing the art, craft, ethics and commerce of narrative nonfiction. Last year, 750 working journalists — reporters, editors, book authors, magazine writers, radio, TV and film people, all fascinated with narrative, from 30 states and a handful of other nations — came to hone their convergent skills and their understanding of the expanding place for narrative nonfiction in the mass media.

What united this audience of serious professionals was the understanding that narrative can step past tired conventions of expression, past the fragmented understanding of complex stories, and offer engaging coverage that weaves human experience in with the politics, power, and technology and events of the day.

Pulitzer-winning reporters and National Book Award and Critics Circle winners, a MacArthur fellow, best selling authors, reporters you’ve admired from the N.Y. Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, top teachers, editors and more, will speak and chat with you Aboard the Narrative Train III.

Each speaker will solo, and also join a panel. We’ll discuss the ethics and the mechanics of nonfiction stories and how to write them well, the hard truths about marketing, ways to make newsrooms more writer-friendly, the business advantages of newspaper serials. And, at a reading late Saturday afternoon, speakers will offer selections of their work.

This year, we’ve expanded to two days from one. And every conference time-block except the three plenaries offers a choice of six speakers. We’ve left more time between sessions for you to meet the speakers and each other. And, we’ve recently joined up with the nine other conferences across America that comprise the National Writers' Workshop/Poynter Institute series.

To learn more and to register, please visit our website.

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SPEAKERS AT THE DEC. 2-3 CONFERENCE ON NARRATIVE JOURNALISM

Donna Britt (Washington Post columnist): A Columnist's Balancing Act - finding an intimate voice for national issues.

Jimmy Tingle (Boston-based, CBS-TV comedian): Funny, Telling Stories.

Tracy Kidder (Pulitzer-winning author of Soul of a New Machine, House, Among Schoolchildren, Home Town): Wrestling with Field Notes.

Helene Atwan (Director, Beacon Press): Turning Journalism into Books and Books into Journalism

Robert Atwan (series editor, Best American Essays, wrote for NYTimes, Atlantic): Essays — a publishing ecology.

Tom French (Pulitzer-winning reporter, St. Petersburg Times): Story Mechanics: strategies for driving the narrative.

Anne Hull (Pulitzer finalist, reporter, WashingtonPost) & Tom French: The Ethics of Narrative (their murder serial ran during the trial).

Ross McElwee (Harvard U. filmmaker – made Sherman's March): Homemade Movies—mixing family and history in narrative film.

David Isay (National Public Radio reporter, new MacArthur Fellow): Making Radio Narratives.

Susan Orlean (NYorker staff, The Orchid Thief): Engineering Beautiful Writing.

Kevin Merida (WashPost reporter/columnist, Pulitzer finalist): Nuanced Political Reportage – empathy is mightier than the hatchet.

Jan Winburn (prize-winning serials editor at the Baltimore Sun): Shaping Ideas for Short Features.

Rick Bragg (Pulitzer winner, NYTimes Miami bureau-chief): keynote address

Walt Harrington (ex-Wash.Post reporter, UofIllinois j-prof): Intimate Journalism — art and craft.

Mitch Zukoff (Boston Globe reporter with recent serial, “Choosing Naia”): Battling the System - the newsroom fight for narrative.

Adrian Nicole LeBlanc (NYorker, NY Times Magazine contributor): Blundering Toward Clarity.

Mark Kramer (Writer-in-residence, Boston U., author Three Farms, Invasive Procedures, ed. Literary Journalism.): Reporting for Human Presence.

Anne Fadiman (ed. American Scholar, wrote “The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down”): Putting Together Spirit — cross-cultural reporting.

Adam Hochschild (author of “King Leopold’s Ghost,” New Yorker, Harper’s articles): Reconstructing the Human Dimension of History.

Steven Holmes (NYTimes reporter): Using Narrative to Cover Major Issues — the NYTimes race series.

Chip Scanlan (Poynter Institute, was at Providence Journal., St. PeteTimes):Refining your Topic Until it’s Writing Only You Can Do.