Lane DeGregory has been an acclaimed journalist for more than 30 years and continues to work as an enterprise reporter for the Tampa Bay Times.
Now comes an anthology of her newspaper stories, available for preorder from the University of Chicago Press and then in wide circulation April 12.
“‘The Girl in the Window’ and Other True Tales” features 24 of DeGregory’s stories, including the titular one, which won the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 2009.
The stories themselves are a master class in narrative journalism, but in the book, DeGregory also spills her secrets — how she convinced reluctant sources, how she found intimate details, how she learned to report and write with authority.
“This book comes at a critical moment in storytelling,” writes “Dopesick” author Beth Macy in the foreword. Macy laments that newspapers are shrinking and how “a slow-simmering brew of political rage, growing inequality, and disinformation threatens our very democracy.”
She calls “‘The Girl in the Window’ and Other True Tales” a blessed balm.
“It also demonstrates Lane’s unparalleled range, from investigatory enterprise stories to pure features that both spin off the news and stand alone for their depth and timelessness. What they all have in common is they help you better understand your neighbors — all your neighbors — and, more importantly, they make you feel. Their strength originates from the fact that Lane squarely locates herself among rather than above the people she meets, armed with her legal pad, an insatiable and genuine curiosity, and a quest to understand rather than judge.”
You can hear more about DeGregory’s work — and the stories in the book — on WriteLane, a podcast featured here on the Poynter site.
