The Story Close Reads

They say evolution made us into storytellers. But in a world drowning in narrative, can we learn to be something else?

He was one of Amazon’s most prolific product reviewers. But when poet and author Kevin Killian died in 2019, he left behind something more profound than just shopping advice.

In the wake of 2023’s so-called ‘media apocalypse’, a plucky band of resistance websites has decided to fight back. So have journalist-run co-operatives finally cracked the content code?

The group behind National Novel Writing Month, which challenges writers to pen 50,000 words each November, called opposing AI “classist and ableist”. Authors revolted—sparking debate about the very nature of creativity.

The brain behind Brain Pickings reads widely on every subject under the sun—then weaves everything she’s read into impossibly long essays of her own. Would slogging through Popova’s entire output make you a wiser, more noble person? Kirsten Drysdale decided to find out.

We all love a battler. But with nearly half the world heading to the polls in 2024, political commentator Andrew Mueller wonders if it's time to put the underdog myth to sleep.

The activist investor behind Hindenburg Research is doing the work once reserved for investigative reporters (and making millions in the process). Has he stumbled on a new model for holding corporations to account?

Science fiction writers usually imagine far-out worlds for fun (and, well, to sell books). Now, a select few are doing it in the name of national security.

In The Heat Will Kill You First, the best-selling author turns an invisible, nebulous subject into a page-turning thriller.

Four years after his incarceration on Manus, Behrouz Boochani reflects on the writing that helped him hold onto life while in prison—and then to make sense of it after.

They were the beloved upstarts of the millennial era. Now publications like BuzzFeed and Vice are the ones being disrupted. Where did the dream of the 2010s go wrong?

For years, Jeff Kennett ruled Hawthorn Football Club like he’d once ruled Victoria. Then along came a challenger trained in the art of political storytelling.

For decades, newsrooms have followed the dictum ‘if it bleeds, it leads’. Experts say a more helpful form of journalism is possible. Will it take a revolution to put it into practice?

Can you post about being laid off without seeming like an unhinged automaton? Comedian Patrick Marlborough investigates the strange, relentlessly happy phenomenon of being fired in the age of LinkedIn.

When the world shut down, writer Fleur Macdonald sought distraction in the 26 paperback books of Lee Child. She came for the punch-ups. She left with a masterclass in fiction writing.

Australians responded to the Queen’s passing in various ways—not all of them glowing. Why aren't these views expressed in our media?

The Slaughterhouse-Five author believed there were just eight different story 'shapes'—and that they might be of interest to anthropologists. The anthropologists thought otherwise. But why?

While reporters were busy asking trivia questions, others sat on news that would have sent shock waves through the political system. Will the press learn from its mistakes? Ben Eltham investigates.

The climate crisis has sparked its own literary genre. Is it just morbid entertainment, or could ‘cli-fi’ actually help us avert disaster?

Reality TV is bringing sports like F1 to the uninitiated. Fans say the format shines a light on a world usually hidden from view by media gatekeepers. Others aren’t so sure.

Before he was president of a country under siege, Volodymyr Zelensky was a comedian. Has he transferred the skills he learned on the comedy circuit to the diplomatic stage?

How do you turn 140,000 legal documents into a primetime TV phenomenon? You call James Goldston.

What the story of the “Irish Atlantis” says about our need to make sense of an uncertain world.

Has Grace Tame’s refusal to bargain with power changed the rules around public advocacy in Australia?

The bazillionaire once listed a dozen storytelling elements every Amazon TV show had to include. They say more about our obsession with rules than they do about making good TV.

They're often derided for their ‘so bad they’re good’ wordplay. But there’s a skill to crafting the perfect country song title—and journalists would do well to take note.

If Labor versus Liberal sometimes feels like Campbell’s Soup verus Heinz, that’s no accident.

The conspiracy theory, which borrowed from the creative writing community to tell its story, has more in common with Harry Potter than you might think.

The media is slowly abandoning the doom-and-gloom cliches associated with mental illness. But do the alternative narratives fall into the same trap?