The Blog

When was the last time you really listened to someone? This is a key question New York Times contributor Kate Murphy asks in her book  “...

This week I am teaching students at the University of Groningen about writing an op-ed, which is a short, newsy opinion piece. It’s a...

February is the month of love—one of the most important yet hackneyed words in the English language. For millennia, writers, poets, and...

A large part of teaching writing is encouraging students to read more, opening their eyes to engaging stories so they can eventually...

Journalism increasingly uses AI to gather news, begging the question: does mingling algorithms with a human touch lead to trustworthy...

I’m teaching journalistic feature writing at RUG (University of Groningen) and this week and we have been talking about one of the most...

I subscribe to Suleika Jaquad’s Isolation Journals (on Substack), which includes writing prompts each week, and this week the focus was...

I’ve started teaching journalistic feature writing again at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, which prompts me to think more deeply about...

Two years into the pandemic, it’s become glaringly obvious that while we might be in this together, humans have the rotten tendency of...

Lockdowns have triggered a resurgence in letter writing--a good thing I came across an article the other day on the art of writing love...

I became a journalist to make a difference—but how to do so when the industry struggles to stay afloat in turbulent seas and is...

I love writing and like all passions, it’s not always understood by those who don’t share it. I grew up in a family enthusiastic about...

Photo by Marlon Trottmann from Pexels 2020 has left me with a jumble of bizarre impressions: heightened emotions over health scares,...

I am currently teaching a journalism storytelling course at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, and during our first class we discussed why...

I was trained as a journalist, so you’d think I follow the news daily, but I just can’t. Really, I won’t. The glut of information (and...

Time for the Space Cowgirl! It’s not rocket science to say men hog the spotlight when it comes to the space race, and 2020 is no...

The summer holiday months are upon us, yet I am still in the middle of an extenuated spring-cleaning phase, which started months ago when...

It’s 2020, and while technology continues to advance rapidly, human nature remains the same. What drives modern-day technology (such as...

I often tell my students to think of writing as taking a photograph—but of your thoughts. Writing freezes time. As we live in such...

I am still working on my first screenplay, which has been a 5-year process, and after so many years learning how to plot a story, I am...