COMMENTS

  1. The Winners of Our Personal Narrative Essay Contest

    In September, we challenged teenagers to write short, powerful stories about meaningful life experiences for our first-ever personal narrative essay contest. This contest, like every new contest ...

  2. The Winners of Our 3rd Annual Personal Narrative ...

    Published Jan. 20, 2022 Updated Jan. 25, 2022. For a third year, we invited students from 11 to 19 to tell us short, powerful stories about a meaningful life experience for our Personal Narrative ...

  3. Lives

    The Best of Our Lives Column. For more than 20 years, The Times Magazine has published Lives, a series of incisive personal essays or as-told-to accounts.

  4. Our 3rd Annual Personal Narrative Writing Contest

    Our 3rd Annual Personal Narrative Writing Contest. We invite students to tell a short story about a meaningful life experience in 600 words or fewer. Contest Dates: Oct. 13 to Nov. 17, 2021. Our ...

  5. From 'Lives' to 'Modern Love': Writing ...

    If you're a regular Times reader, you've no doubt enjoyed, and maybe even taught with, some of the 1,000-plus personal essays from the Magazine's Lives column, which has run weekly for decades.

  6. Private Lives

    Personal essays from writers around the globe, on the news of the world and the news of individual lives.

  7. New York Times Opinion Guest Essays

    Learn more about New York Times Opinion guest essays, including how to submit a guest essay for review and publication. New York Times Opinion guest essays deliver an argument in the author's voice, based on fact and drawn from expertise or experience. Our goal is to offer readers a robust range of ideas on newsworthy events or issues of broad public concern from people outside The New York ...

  8. Flipping the Script on the College Essay With Help From The New York Times

    Sharon Murchie tells us how she uses personal narratives from The New York Times, like these college essays on money, to help her high school seniors write authentic and meaningful application essays.

  9. 10 Personal Writing Ideas

    Use Metropolitan Diary or Complaint Box as your guide, and write about it! Challenge yourself to write the pithiest, punchiest "diary" entry or complaint possible. 6. Look into the future. Write your own obituary or wedding announcement , based on what you envision for yourself.

  10. Getting Personal: Writing College Essays for the Common Application

    Nikita ·. In this lesson, students will explore the open-ended prompts for the 2013-14 Common Application essays through writing and discussion. Then, they will identify and examine Times pieces that might serve as "mentor texts" for their own application essays. Finally, they craft essays.

  11. 500 Prompts for Narrative and Personal Writing

    Every school day since 2009 we've asked students a question based on an article in The New York Times. Now, five years later, we've collected 500 of them that invite narrative and personal writing and pulled them all together in one place (available here as a PDF).. The categorized list below touches on everything from sports to travel, education, gender roles, video games, fashion, family ...

  12. Going Beyond Cliché: How to Write a Great College Essay

    Ask them to really think broadly, aiming to get at least 20 items on their list. They should include "major" events like births, deaths, travel, coming of age rituals, or course, but also the more mundane moments they remember that have marked their lives in some way — a car ride, a dinner, a chance meeting, etc.

  13. How to Get Published in NYT's Modern Love Column, From 5 Authors Who Did It

    5 writers spill on how they got published in the New York Times' Modern Love column. Since I'm not yet qualified to dole out advice about this particular column, I consulted five Modern Love authors for advice. Two of the six authors featured here have won the lottery twice! Here are their tips, stories and insights. 1.

  14. How to Write a 'Lives' Essay

    William James Warren/Science Faction, via Corbis. The "Lives" essay has been running in our magazine nearly every week since 1996. For those who don't know, it is a place for true personal stories, running about 800 words long, and in the print edition, it's the last bit of editorial content, right inside the back cover.

  15. Guide to The NY Times' Five Best College Essays on Work, Money and

    Every year, The New York Times issues an open call for college application essays on the subject of money, work, and class. Money becomes a lens through which identity, family, and dreams, can be glimpsed. Out of the many submissions they received this year, The Times published the five best essays (four were published in the newspaper, and one in The Times's new Snapchat Discover Feature).

  16. Personal Essays

    Two Sister-Poets Gone Too Soon: Ntozake Shange and My Sister. I want tell you something about these women, their strengths and weaknesses, and the profound effect that each had on my life and my ...

  17. Examples of personal essays that worked

    This collection includes personal essays from students who were accepted into JHU, along with commentary from admissions committee members on what made the essays stand out. 3. The New York Times publishes an annual series called "Standout College Application Essays" featuring a selection of exceptional personal essays written by students.

  18. PDF Excellent (4) Proficient (3 Developing (2) Beginning (1

    The New York Times Learning Network Student Personal Narrative Essay Contest Rubric. Excellent (4) Proficient (3 Developing (2) Beginning (1. Story : Personal narrative tells a short but memorable story about a life experience and communicates why itwas meaningful to the writer . Language : Personal narrative uses vivid details and images to ...

  19. Is That Drink Worth It to You?

    More recently, though, research has piled up debunking the idea that moderate drinking is good for you. Last year, a major meta-analysis that re-examined 107 studies over 40 years came to the ...

  20. Publish Your Personal Essay: 22 Magazines and Websites

    Pitch your personal essay of 1500 and 3500 words to [email protected] — don't forget to format your submission as a Word document with Times New Roman 12-point font, double-spaced. The last reported rate for The Smart Set was 20 cents per word. Must-read personal essay: " White Chapel " by Eric Bryan. 21. PULP Magazine

  21. New York Times Opinion Video Guest Essays

    The New York Times Opinion Video department accepts pitches for video guest essays, which are short-form videos that make an argument, based in fact, drawn from the expertise or personal experience of the contributor. Video guest essays are not intended to be narrowly about breaking news, but they should be somewhat relevant to current events ...

  22. What My Dog Taught Me About Mortality

    She went down into the hole. Into this yawning vortex of doom. She dove into an alternate world: the secret infinite maze of the inside of our very old house. Now, Mango was a fat little golden ...

  23. Not Building Them

    By Megan Kimble. May 31, 2024. When Interstate 25 was constructed through Denver, highway engineers moved a river. It was the 1950s, and nothing was going to get in the way of building a national ...

  24. About Us: Essays from the Disability Series of the New York Times

    Based on the pioneering New York Times series, About Us collects the personal essays and reflections that have transformed the national conversation around disability.. Boldly claiming a space in which people with disabilities can be seen and heard as they are―not as others perceive them― About Us captures the voices of a community that has for too long been stereotyped and misrepresented.

  25. 8 Productivity Books Time-Management Experts Actually Use

    7. The Sabbath, by Abraham Joshua Heschel. While Cal Newport's work was recommended by several experts, Dr. Newport's own favorite book on productivity is, he said, "perhaps unexpected ...

  26. PDF The Winners of Our Personal Narrative Essay Contest

    The Winners of Our Personal Narrative Essay Contest. We asked students to write about a meaningful life experience. Here are the eight winning essays, as well as runners-up and honorable mentions. By The Learning Network. Jan. 7, 2020. Our main inspiration for this contest was the long-running New York Times Magazine Lives column.

  27. The New ChatGPT Offers a Lesson in AI Hype

    The New ChatGPT Offers a Lesson in A.I. Hype. OpenAI released GPT-4o, its latest chatbot technology, in a partly finished state. It has much to prove. Brian X. Chen is the author of Tech Fix, a ...

  28. 10 Writing Prompts

    10. Write as fast as you can, as much as you can, in one time period. Compete against a friend. See what comes up! You might get started by each writing down five topic ideas, one each on a piece of paper, and throwing them into a paper bag.

  29. We Want to Know: What's Your Favorite Sandwich in New York City?

    The only surprise is how well it all works together, Wells writes. Paul Carmichael, the former chef at Momofuku Seiobo in Sydney, Australia, returns to New York to play a key role in shaping the ...

  30. Book Review: 'Traveling,' by Ann Powers

    In her new book, "Traveling," the music critic Ann Powers offers a highly personal, even confessional, meditation on Mitchell's life, work and influence.