Stories do not write themselves, much as writers may modestly insist they do. Stories exist because writers need to tell them—a need so deep that they will endure false starts, woeful sentences, dead-end paragraphs, two-dimensional characters, flabby prose, wrong turns, and shaky narratives. In short, they will risk all the things that, taken together, comprise the writer’s greatest fear: failure. Specifically, failing to tell the story they need to tell.
The Delacorte Review believes in writers, and what they can accomplish when unencumbered by anxiety, terror, despair, and fear of rejection. We believe that writers — both emerging and experienced — who feel supported and confident can produce their best work, and that readers benefit. We want our readers to discover new, original works of ambitious narrative nonfiction, often by writers they are reading for the first time.
Core to our mission of creating a home for writers and readers is our newsletter, Writerland, an ongoing journey to finding joy in writing. Because nothing good ever came from writers punishing themselves.
If the best fiction is propelled by imagination, we believe that the best narrative nonfiction is propelled by the relentless and often-lonely business of finding out things that are often maddeningly difficult to find. In a word: reporting. Nonfiction storytelling can be as compelling, riveting, and transporting as fiction—so long as you come back, as they say, with the goods.
If there is a story you need to tell, perhaps we can help you write it.
The Delacorte Review appears four times a year and is published in cooperation with the Columbia Journalism School and The Delacorte Center for Magazine Journalism. Please support our mission: discovering real true stories and how they happen.
Masthead
Founder and Publisher: Michael Shapiro
Editor: Mike Hoyt
Senior Editor: Cissi Falligant
Managing Editor: Claire Fox
Staff Writer: Natasha Rodriguez
Podcast Producer: Katie Ferguson
Illustrator: Eleonore Hamelin
Web Design by Mario Garcia and Andy Rossback
Art director: Joan Hacker
Advisory Board
Daniel Alarcón, Helen Benedict, Jelani Cobb, Samuel G. Freedman, David Hajdu, LynNell Hancock, Marguerite Holloway, Dale Maharidge, Alissa Solomon, Jonathan Weiner
Published in cooperation with the Columbia Journalism School and The Delacorte Center for Magazine Journalism
2950 Broadway, New York, New York 10027
Dean: Steve Coll; Director of The Delacorte Center: Keith Gessen
Copyright 2019 © The Delacorte Review
www.delacortereview.org
Note: Before there was The Delacorte Review there was The Big Roundtable, which between 2013 and 2018 published works of ambitious narrative nonfiction, many of which can be found on our Archive page.
