Braided & Reported Essays
What are they?
This week, I’m sharing a few notes from a recent panel discussion: “Craft Talk: Finding Your Story’s Structure & the Braided Essay,” which I took part in at the American Society of Journalists and Authors 2026 virtual conference, “Freelancers’ Blueprint: Navigating a Shifting Landscape.”
Moderated by Kate Cray, a freelance writer and former editor of The Atlantic’s family section, our panel also included journalist Mike Sowden, creator of the popular science newsletter, Everything Is Amazing, and Pamela Weintraub, senior editor handling science and psychology at Aeon. (*Note: if you ever want to pitch Pamela, she acquires longform reported essays for Aeon (which pay $2,000) and life stories, including longform portraits, for Psyche (which pay $3,500 + expenses).
For anyone interested in writing reported or braided essays— stories that weave multiple strands of research, memory, and experiences into a cohesive narrative—I’ve included below a few notes of advice from our discussion, along with links and story examples from my syllabus, which I also shared with ASJA conference attendees.
I’m currently teaching a writing workshop at UC Irvine, “The Reported Essay,” and journalist Kim Cross of The Waterproof Notebook recently dropped in to discuss two of her pieces: “The King of Tides,” a beautiful braided essay about salmon fishing and her father, and “I Tracked a Wild Salmon From Sea to Plate,” a National Magazine Award finalist this year.
Kim echoed advice from ASJA panelists on braiding an essay: Think of each strand of the braid as its own journey, with its own beginning, middle, and end.
New Video Interviews on Pitching & Craft
Before we get into reported and braided essays, a few announcements:
For the Institute for Independent Journalists’ Freelance Journalism Podcast, I recently had a chance to interview Clarissa A. León, deputy editor of Documented. Clarissa works with diverse freelancers on stories centering the voices of immigrants in New York City and New Jersey, producing reporting and resource guides in four different languages. She discussed how freelancers can pitch her—even early-career journalists or students. You can watch the interview on the IIJ’s YouTube channel or listen via Apple Podcasts.
I’m also excited to launch a new series, “Writers Reading: Conversations on the Craft of Nonfiction.” Continuing The Reported Essay’s tradition of longform interviews, it will now feature some of these as occasional recorded video chats, focusing on craft and discussing writers who inspire our work.
The first episode drops next week, right here, with journalist Raksha Vasudevan, a 2025 Whiting Nonfiction Award Grantee for Works-in-Progress for her forthcoming book: “Empires Between Us: Estrangement and Kinship Across Three Continents.”
In our recorded chat, Raksha and I discussed her own writing process, as well as the 2007 nonfiction book that has been a model for her: “Lose Your Mother,” by Saidiya Hartman, who traces the history of the Atlantic slave trade by recounting a journey she took across Ghana. It is an exquisite example of the author braiding her own journey as narrator with deep historical and archival research.
ASJA & The Reported Essay
Let’s return for a moment to a definition of “the reported essay.” I think of it as a first-person nonfiction story grounded in reflection and reporting. These pieces weave facts, scenes, interviews, and research with personal observations and narrative storytelling.
Some braided essays can also be reported essays. One strand may be the reporter’s journey. Another may be about other people in the story, or the trajectory of research or history. Some editors, like this one from Mother Jones, seek pitches specifically for reported essays.
