Newsletter Archives - IALJS: The International Association for Literary Journalism Studies

CFP: Comics and Machines

April 22-23, 2026 Deadline for abstracts: 1st December 2025 Notifications of acceptance: 30th December 2025 Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm & Uppsala University, Sweden Steering committee: Jan Baetens, Jaqueline Berndt, Jan von Bonsdorff, Gareth Brookes, Benoît Crucifix, Björn-Olav Dozo, Anna Foka, Isabelle Gribomont, Andre Holzapfel, Per Israelson, Gaëtan Le Coarer, Ilan Manouach, Pedro Moura,…

Ben Stubbs

Travel Writing Post-Pandemic: A Creative Exploration

Read an excerpt here from the Palgrave Literary Journalism series book Re-thinking Travel Writing: The Journey of a Genre. In this latest newsletter entry, I wanted to showcase the work that is coming from the Palgrave Studies in Literary Journalism series, edited by our own Sue Joseph, Willa McDonald and Matthew Ricketson. I also figured that…

Ben Stubbs

How to Trick Your Brain into Making Life Feel Longer and Richer

Forget anti-aging creams. The secret is living like you’re not in a hurry. By Brett Popplewell This piece in The Walrus was adapted from “Outrunning Time” a public lecture I gave in April 2025 at Sir Wilfrid Laurier University when my book Outsider: An Old Man, a Mountain and the Search for a Hidden Past was…

Brett Popplewell

Blurring the Boundary between Fact and Fiction

The Case of Matti Kuusela By Maria Lassila-Merisalo The media in Finland stirred on Friday, 22 March 2024, when the editor-in-chief of the newspaper Aamulehti announced that they had removed all articles written by their retired, award-winning journalist, Matti Kuusela.[1] Kuusela had just published a book, a combination of memoir and anthology, and confessed to…

Maria Lassila-Merisalo

Stories That Stay With Us

This month we hear from the President of the IALJS, Associate Professor Willa McDonald, as she writes about three works of literary journalism that have had a lasting impact. A few years ago, a challenge was circulating on social media. Friends were nominating each other to post for seven days about books they loved. Mine…

Willa McDonald

Excerpt: ‘Adventures in the apocalyptic style: Preppers and the end of everything’

This is an excerpt from an essay I wrote for the Australian literary journal Griffith Review, titled ‘Adventures in the apocalyptic style: Preppers and the end of everything’. The essay is, in turn, part of a much longer book project about survivalist and prepper subcultures around the world, working title: We Are All Preppers Now….

Tom Doig

Changing of the Guard

Literary Journalism farewells ‘Fitz’ Literary Journalism, the newsletter of the IALJS, will be saying goodbye to its current editor Jonathan D. Fitzgerald shortly as he moves on to new and exciting projects. My name is Dr Ben Stubbs, and I will be stepping in to his position with the newsletter as we move towards this…

Ben Stubbs

Excerpt: Mediating the Real: Self-Reflection in Recent American Reportage by Pascal Sigg

The following is an excerpt from the introduction of Pascal Sigg’s book Mediating the Real: Self-Reflection in Recent American Reportage (Transcript Publishing, 2024). Authors who would like to promote their books of or about literary journalism in the newsletter can email us at literaryjournalismsubmissions [at] gmail.com. In 2007, the writer David Foster Wallace described contemporary…

Pascal Sigg

Screenshot of Reading Narrative Journalism (2024)

New Edition of “Reading Narrative Journalism” Launched

As some of you have already heard, I’ve recently launched a new edition of my online digital resource, Reading Narrative Journalism (2024), which has been designed as an introduction and multimedia resource for undergraduates and beginning graduate students (with a few thoughts for teachers thrown in). The site has been updated to include more writers, a slightly fuller…

Chris Wilson

“Girl Reporter”: Tracking intergenerational trauma through the story of Eva Sommer, the inaugural winner of Australia’s first national journalism prize

In 1956, Eva Sommer, 22, won the first-ever Walkley Award, Australia’s equivalent of the Pulitzers, for her article about a stowaway with amnesia and no identification papers. Sommer discovered he was 26-year-old Jacob Bresler, a Jewish immigrant and Australian citizen, accomplishing in days what the authorities had failed to do in months. But when she…

Jennifer Martin

CFP: Proposed Volume on Literary Journalism/Creative Nonfiction in East-Central Europe

Abstracts are invited for a proposed collection on Literary Journalism/Creative Non-Fiction in East-Central Europe. The volume takes as its central concern the current shapes and forms of what is variously called literary journalism, creative non-fiction, creative documentary narrative, or reportage (among other terms) in the region. We have already received preliminary interest from an academic…

Jonathan D. Fitzgerald

Star-Studded Panels Featured at IALJS at AEJMC Washington, DC

In early August, IALJS sessions at the annual AEJMC sparkled with insight on two panels featuring a mix of accomplished world-class scholars. Washington, DC was the site of last year’s conference, which hosted two full sessions dedicated to the theme of “The Art of Fact in Science and Nature Writing.” The sessions marked the last…

David O. Dowling