Longform Storytelling at The Economist's 1843 Magazine

A conversation with editor Kylie Warner, a 2025 ASME NEXT Award Winner

Earlier this month, the American Society of Magazine Editors announced its 2025 winners. In addition to honoring great stories, the awards also recognize journalists under 30 for their outstanding achievements. This week, I am delighted to bring you my interview with one of those talented ASME NEXT award winners, Kylie Warner, associate editor of 1843 Magazine, the longform publication of The Economist.

Kylie talked to me about 1843’s evolution into in-depth narrative storytelling, her journalism career, and her approach to editing and commissioning feature stories. She also discusses craft, what makes a great story for 1843, how to pitch her, and pay rates.

Before we get into our Q&A, a few notes:

Mallary Tenore Tarpley

at Nieman Storyboard recently put together a wonderful guide to books on storytelling recommended by journalists, authors, producers and filmmakers. I suggested a few books for the list, and frequently refer to others on it. It’s an invaluable resource for writers, editors, and educators.

Also this week, Kevin Nguyen, features editor at The Verge, announced a special series called American War, about the legacy of the war in Vietnam, 50 years later. The series launched with an excellent feature by Camille Bromley, who wrote about Operation Babylift and transnational adoptions—an important issue, which I also delved into in my 2022 book, Somewhere Sisters (which Camille mentions in her thoroughly reported piece). This beautifully designed digital package—put together by an illustrator, fact checker, and group of writers who are all of Vietnamese descent—unravels the misunderstandings and myths around the war and its aftermath.

Kevin, who recently talked to The Reported Essay about editing features and writing books, also has a new novel out this month, Mỹ Documents, about what happens to a family when the U.S. government begins detaining Vietnamese Americans.

And Elizabeth Kolbert recently wrote an in-depth New Yorker feature story on Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow’s new book, Atomic Dreams. Becca, whose book was also listed on The New Yorker’s “Best Books We Read This Week,” talked to The Reported Essay recently about going from article to published book.

Kevin and Becca—as well as many more fantastic writers—will be speaking at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books this weekend, so drop by their panels if you are in town.

Finally, on Sunday, May 4th, I will be in conversation with New Yorker Executive Editor Michael Luo about his new book, Strangers In the Land, at the San Diego Central Library. Luo’s powerful work of narrative nonfiction uncovers an epic history of exclusion, belonging, and the complications of America’s multiracial democracy. The event is free and open to the public. Hope you can join us.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy my conversation with Kylie Warner, an editor and journalist living in London. She has written about books, arts, and culture for The New Yorker (where she was previously a member of the editorial staff), The Point, 1843 magazine, The Economist, and Apollo. She is currently the associate editor at 1843 magazine.

Our interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Kylie Warner, associate editor at 1843 magazine.

Can you tell us about 1843 Magazine, how it's different from The Economist, and the kinds of stories you're looking for as an editor?

1843 started as a supplement called Intelligent Life. It focused on arts and culture and was designed to complement The Economist—like FT Weekend or other lifestyle supplements. In recent years, the magazine has evolved. Our intention now is to serve as the longform section of The Economist. That shift has brought us closer to the core of the paper in terms of subject matter, but with a distinct approach to form and narrative.

We aim to be in conversation with great American magazines that publish character-led, narrative-driven feature journalism—pieces that typically run 4,000 to 5,000 words. We occasionally go longer if the story calls for it.

In terms of subject matter, we're looking for topics that generally fall into categories that The Economist often covers. Think stories that have a business or global perspective. Personally, I love culture stories that have an economic angle; I’m working on a few of those now. It is quite open-ended as to what the core story can be, but I think we do ask: How does this piece enhance the work The Economist does? Our goal is to add characters, color, life, depth, and nuance to the good work The Economist is already doing by focusing on stories that the paper doesn’t have the space, time, and resources to develop.

It’s interesting that The Economist and 1843 are investing in longform. There’s always this question: does anyone still read it? What do you think is behind that investment?

It’s a good question. One reason is that 1843 has been successful in converting readers into subscribers. The people who seek us out tend to love the work and often become drawn into The Economist’s broader universe. And the brand has rapidly diversified. The podcast department has grown massively. They now produce longform series and shows like “The Weekend Intelligence,” which is a great hour-long program that aligns with the kind of work we do at 1843.

I think The Economist recognizes that readers have different needs at different times of the week. We want 1843 to be part of the weekend experience, for when readers have a few more hours and maybe want to step away from topics like tariffs for a bit and read an immersive story over their morning coffee. Also, we’ve done well with awards, both in Europe and the U.S. I think that helps solidify our place globally.

Let’s talk a bit about your journey. I didn’t even know you were still in your twenties. How did you get into journalism?

Like a lot of journalists, I grew up loving to read and write. I was also really into the humanities generally and foreign languages. But I resisted journalism as a path for a long time. I wanted to be a novelist. I went through most of high school, college, and even grad school not thinking about journalism whatsoever.

I should also say, I didn’t grow up reading magazines. Both my parents are engineers, and they nurtured my love for all things literary. But at the same time, I didn’t grow up in a house that read The New Yorker or The Atlantic or anything like that. I wasn’t particularly attracted to journalism events on any campus I was on or working for the student newspaper.

I studied comparative literature at Columbia in undergrad. It wasn’t until grad school, when I was doing a one-year master’s in gender studies at the LSE in London, that I started thinking about journalism. I had some editorial experience through work-study in college. I’d interned at a publishing company in India one summer, and then I worked on a manuscript about the history of the Casa Italiana, which is on Columbia’s campus. I really enjoyed those editorial tasks, and thought maybe I would look for something in that realm. When I saw an internship advertised at 1843, it just felt like a good fit, especially because it was still very arts-and-culture focused at the time.

So that internship was your entry point?

Yes, I worked there for four months. I did a bit of everything—fact-checking, picture research, social copy. But I had to leave when my student visa ran out, so I decided to move to New York without a job and see what happened.

It was scary. I wouldn't have done it, actually, if I hadn't had the support of a friend who lived there, who was working at the New York Review of Books. She had a cheap room in her apartment that was free. She encouraged me to come and just hustle. That made all the difference. When I finally got a job offer from The New Yorker as an editorial assistant, I was able to start the next week.

So, you got the internship at 1843 without a traditional journalism background. What do you think got you in?

The writing sample. That’s true across The Economist; generally, they put a lot of weight on writing samples. Mine was a satirical critique of “Love Island,” the television show, which the 1843 staff found funny. It was me remarking on how insane I thought my colleagues at my grad school part-time job were for going home every single night to watch “Love Island.” It wasn’t anything formal, just something that showed I had the voice and sensibility they were looking for.

Was that the moment you knew this was the world you wanted to be in?

Yes. Making a magazine is so tangible and fun. At the time, 1843 was still a print bi-monthly, so I got to see a few issues come together. I even got to do a little editing, and I realized that’s what I really loved.

So you leaned toward editing more than reporting? The feeling of putting together a story, pulling it apart, seeing what works. That was exciting to you?

Definitely. I’m more introverted, and editing felt like something that fit my strengths. That said, I realized much later that editing is more extroverted a job than I initially thought. The perception I had as an intern was not inaccurate, of course. As an editor, you do have to spend long periods alone, figuring out what works for a piece. But obviously, there's a point at which you have to interact with people. You’re constantly talking to writers, coordinating with stakeholders, advocating for pieces. But I’ve come to enjoy that work too.

And now, as an editor, you’re actively looking for new writers and building your network?

Yes, especially at 1843, where we’re a very small team. We only have one staff writer, so we rely heavily on freelancers and a few Economist correspondents. Building relationships with writers is a big part of what I do, even if the right story for them and for us doesn’t come along immediately.

It sounds like there's a level of reporting you’re doing as an editor, trying to find the right people for the right stories.

There is a lot of groundwork you need to do in order to get to know writers in the first place. Convincing them to write for you, and then finding them the right story––it’s like matchmaking in a way.

I wanted to also ask about your time at The New Yorker. You mentioned working as an editorial assistant. How did you land that role? I know it’s super competitive. Did having 1843 on your resume help?

So basically, when I moved to New York without a job, I reached out to anyone I knew, or who knew someone, and I ended up having coffee with Fergus McIntosh, who’s now head of fact-checking at The New Yorker. At the time, he was still a fact-checker. It was just a casual chat about our interests. I wasn’t angling for a job, and I definitely wasn’t trying to get into fact-checking. I admire it so much, but I knew it wasn’t for me.

During that conversation, he mentioned that a couple of editorial assistant roles were open. So, I reached out to a current assistant and took an editing test through her. Not long after that, I started working with Dorothy Wickenden, who was then the executive editor at The New Yorker.

You had to take an editing test to be an editorial assistant?

Yeah, and it wasn’t easy. Since then, I’ve taken similar ones, and I’ve even administered them when helping my bosses with hiring for editorial roles. The one I took for The New Yorker was pretty standard: about 1,000 or 1,500 words of line editing, plus a short memo—maybe a couple hundred words, explaining what structural and content edits you’d suggest.

So you worked at The New Yorker for a few years. When did you go back to 1843?

I was at The New Yorker for about three and a half years, from 2019 through 2022, with the pandemic in the middle. The role I took at 1843 required a big move, from New York to London. But I was ready to start doing my own editing. The New Yorker is wonderful in so many ways, but I felt like I couldn’t quite do the kind of work I really wanted there. That’s what led me to start looking elsewhere.

I did want to ask about how some of the stories that you’ve put out came together. You mentioned that you had kind of a theme. You’ve done a few about cults, and I read those, which were pretty wild. “Inside the Kenyan cult that starved itself to death,” which immediately drew me in. Maybe you can talk about how that came to you.

Carey Baraka is a really talented young writer who lives in Nairobi. And I think this was a great example of laying the groundwork with a writer a long time in advance of finding the right story. I’d read Carey’s work in other publications; I really liked his writing, which is quite literary, so I reached out early on in this job. We had a few pitches go back and forth, but nothing really clicked. Then the Kenyan massacre story came up during one of our weekly ideas meetings. As soon as we heard it, we knew it had all the signs of a feature story. At the time, there weren’t many details, but there were survivors, people who had witnessed it. I suggested Carey for it.

He was hesitant at first. It wasn’t the kind of writing he’d originally envisioned doing. But he submitted a pitch with his vision for the story, and I commissioned him, and he got to reporting. He did such a fantastic job. There were really sensitive conversations. It was a challenge for both of us, honestly, because neither of us had done this kind of longform investigative work before.

We wanted the story to run around the time Paul Mackenzie, the preacher charged with murder, was going to court, last spring. That gave us a news peg to aim for. Not all our pieces are pegged to news events, but this one was.

The beginning is quite literary. It starts subtly, and then you realize, oh god, what’s happening? It just gets darker, more investigative as it goes.

Yeah. Our intention was for it to feel like a dark fairy tale. So many cultures have these “don’t go into the woods” stories, right? And we wanted to tap into that mystery. The structure helped. It builds suspense slowly, revealing creepy details until it’s just plain horrifying. It also helped us deal with a reporting challenge: Carey had spoken with so many people, but there were inevitably gaps in what they knew and what we knew as a result.

So the editing challenge was: how do we weave all of this into a plausible narrative of what happened? Using a more literary structure helped us smooth over those moments when no single voice could fully articulate what had happened.

Some stories have one strong narrative voice, but other stories include multiple voices, and the world itself becomes the character. That’s how this piece felt. Quite literary, and your writer had the skill to pull that off.

He was a great match for the story, and I’m so glad he decided to do it with us. He’s been really amply rewarded for it too. Nominated for some major prizes. The True Story Award and another one called the Fetisov. It’s amazing to see him receive that kind of recognition.

You did the work of connecting with him to the right piece, and that kind of support from an editor really helps a writer’s career—especially when it leads to recognition. That’s such a cool part of being an editor. Then you did another cult story, “The doomsday cult’s guide to taking over a country.” Can you talk about that one? It’s not like you were looking for cult stories, but they found you.

Totally. We joke about me being the “cult editor.” That one was actually commissioned by a colleague who later left 1843, so I took over after the first edit. It was an irresistible pitch from Pete McKenzie, who is a fantastic young writer and the recent winner of a major investigative prize, the Harry Evans Award.

The story was about how a fringe South Korean church convinced Fijians to overlook some of its alleged abuses and embrace its business empire of grocery stores and restaurants. A line from the pitch which stuck with me, and which ended up in the piece, was, “They made good ice cream.” You’re just like, what?

And then it gets progressively weirder.

Exactly. All good features are really the story of two things: the character—or sometimes multiple characters, or a place, or an institution—and then a broader context. In this case, the cult escaping the law in South Korea and landing in Fiji is already such a gripping narrative. But the question was: how do we make this essential for The Economist’s audience?

So the geopolitical angle became the second thread. We wondered: how can places like Fiji––small nations where the rule of law is weak or the economies are struggling––become vulnerable to the machinations of shadowy outside groups? Putting on that framing made the story not just fascinating but more globally relevant.

Sometimes it's the other way around—you find a context that begs for a story, and then you search for the characters.

Do you remember anything structurally that was especially challenging with that story? Structure always feels like the big challenge, but it also sounds like it’s the part you find exciting.

I love structure. It’s the most puzzle-like part of the process, but also one of the hardest. With the Fiji piece, the main challenges were: what will the lede be, and what will the ending be?

The original lede was about the local man allegedly assaulted by cult members. It wasn’t a bad lede at all. It felt intuitive. Pete had spent the most time with him. But by the second or third draft, a colleague of mine read it and said, “I don’t think the incident, as horrible as it is, really captures what’s weird about this cult.”

And she was right. We’re used to cults being abusive and horrific. But what made this one distinct was their business model.

Exactly. Again, it’s like that moment of “What the hell is happening here?”

Yes. Just like with Carey’s piece, we wanted to pull the reader straight into a realm of mystery. So we shifted the opening to Snowy House, which is one of the cult’s businesses. Pete is there, observing the weirdness: Fijians having a good time, and cult members who are clearly not having a good time, and who are unwilling to speak to him. That’s what sets this cult apart, and it made for a much more compelling entry point.

As for the ending, we had to change that close to publication. The men accused of assaulting the local man were acquitted. Originally, the ending had said something like, “This case will be decided soon,” creating this sense of anticipation—a common way features end.

But once we knew the outcome, we had to rethink the ending so it still felt narratively satisfying. We ended up pulling in a quote by the cult’s founder from earlier in the piece: “Don’t be surprised. It’s God’s work.” That had the right tone. It hints at more to come from the cult, even if one particular case against it had been settled.

That’s so interesting. It’s not quite over—there’s still this lingering uncertainty. It’s more complex and nuanced. A tidy ending wouldn’t have served the story. I also noticed with the Kenya story, and another you worked on, “A journey through the world’s newest narco-state,” they were also supported by the Pulitzer Center. Can you talk about how grant funding fits into your work—how those stories come together?

With the narco-state story about Ecuador, I wasn’t involved at the very beginning. Jonathan Beckman, the editor of 1843, had worked with Alexander Clapp before and commissioned the piece. I took on the piece once the first draft came in. In terms of funding, yes, I’ve worked on that for other stories, like Carey’s Kenya piece. Both of those stories were clearly worth doing, and the writers were so strong. We would’ve funded them regardless. But they also fit so well with what Pulitzer supports, and we were thrilled they got the funding.

There are occasionally stories where external funding makes the difference between “yes” and “no” for us. One example is a piece I edited about Little Diomede, an island in Alaska. Jacob Judah, a writer we’ve worked with before, pitched it. We loved the idea, but it’s very expensive to get there. Like, tens of thousands of dollars. So that was a case of: “We’ll commission it if you can get the grant you’re applying for.” And he did.

With something like Ecuador, Alex was there for a few weeks. He could do this masterclass in reporting because the funding let him really embed, and spend lots of time with people, understand the on-the-ground realities.

Was there anything you took from that story—something that stood out to you as an editor, or something instructive for other writers thinking about these kinds of pieces?

It was amazing to work on. Alex is so talented. His prose and his reporting are top-notch. My role was really to tighten the piece and to make sure it remained readable and propulsive across several thousand words.

One of the big things we thought about was how to sharpen the journey aspect of the story. Alex had talked to so many people. In less capable hands, that might have felt random or overwhelming. But by emphasizing his movement across this conflicted country, taking readers to a variety of places which have experienced different forms of violence, we were able to give the piece a strong narrative spine. We even titled it “A journey through the world’s newest narco-state” to make that really clear to readers.

The other big challenge with pieces like this is context. How much do you need to include for a general audience to understand what’s going on? You want to make things as simple and straightforward as possible so that the reader can dive into the story immediately.

I think ultimately the piece did a good job of telling you what you needed to know about Ecuador's decline at the top, and then just letting the story play out from there. Alex really wanted to focus on the people. Political figures like Noboa, the president of Ecuador, have been done well by other outlets. So that's why he kind of only appears in the last scene, because for us, the focus is the country and how ordinary Ecuadorians are experiencing the situation there.

When you're taking pitches, I know you mentioned the story should be about two things. But what do you think is helpful for people who want to pitch you to know before they pitch? What makes a great pitch, and what makes a bad one?

Yeah. Most of the pitches I get right now are really out of date. They tend to still be a bit arts and culture-focused or are for pretty short pieces. To be fair, in the past, we did do shorter, newsier features more often.

So they might not really have tapped into what you're doing now—they haven't paid attention to the change.

Exactly. It’s age-old advice: know the publication you're pitching to. That's the first thing. In terms of the actual content of the pitch, I think the big story, the narrative, whether it's about characters, institutions, a country, whatever it may be, is the thing that should be front and center. That’s what draws me in. The more successful pitches generally also have that one paragraph where they explain how this links to something bigger going on in the world—the why now. That is so important. You can have a really great yarn—and sometimes we do publish just a great story for its own sake—but often what elevates a story is the certainty that this is the moment to tell it. Especially because we commission less than other magazines due to our staffing and resources—we can generally do only 50 pieces a year—we want to know why this piece necessitates being done this year.

Also, having a strong sense of who the story will be told through. This is where people maybe confused us with The Economist. The Economist as a paper is broader. There are voices, of course, but they tend to be very one-line. You don't get to know those people as characters. I want to read pitches for strong stories that also give a sense of who the interesting people are and how they’ll play a role in the narrative. Include a sense of what scenes there might be as well. So basically, all the elements of any long narrative feature! But definitely, lead off with a strong story and then the why now.

I always think of it like the nut graf of the pitch, you have to say the “why now.” Sometimes the story seems so compelling, but like you're saying, especially for you, you need to understand how it fits into the readership too, for 1843. Can you discuss compensation? Do you pay for travel? What is your general rate for a longform?

Our rates start at $1.25 a word. We do pay for travel up to a reasonable point. It depends on the story. But I think it's generous by today’s standards. We understand that to do this journalism, it takes a lot of time and resources to do it properly.

Your stories are from all over the world. What kind of stories are you looking for from U.S.-based reporters? What issues?

Yeah, the U.S. is complicated right now. The additional complication for us is that we have to think pretty far out when commissioning. How do you plan when the administration changes its direction so rapidly? I should say, our one staff writer is U.S.-based, so she naturally gets to do things from there for us. But we’re still looking for freelancers, obviously.

I like to think about the big trends, things that have been around and will continue to be regardless of what the Trump administration does. Healthcare and alternative health, wellness culture. These are problems that the government’s policies are exacerbating, but they have long been interesting in their own right. Same with the culture wars, which can take many forms—across education, pop culture, etc. These stories lend themselves well to being character-based because you can embed in a community and see how these issues actually affect people’s lives.

It’s hard for us to do more reactive U.S. stories or political profiles. Of course, we still do political profiles. I edited a profile of Javier Milei before he became president of Argentina. He justified a profile because he was such a bizarre figure with out-there politics. But in the U.S., I think writers often pitch stories that would interest a U.S. publication—let’s say a profile of a Florida state senator leading the liberal resistance. Figures like that might be interesting as part of a broader piece on a general topic, but it’s hard for us to justify profiling people who could seem marginal to a global audience.

That makes sense. Where would you say your readers are?

They're all over the world. I think most readers are probably from the U.S. But there are still sizable numbers of readers on every continent. That’s important for us to keep in mind. It also explains why in our U.S. pieces, we might spend more time explaining certain concepts. Everyone around the world is subjected to American politics, but there are certain things, like legal stories from the U.S., that can get too into the weeds. Local or state politics can also be tricky for us.

You also edited “Inside the world of vigilante scam-baiters.” It was such a flip, because we usually hear about people being scammed, and then sometimes we hear about the scammers. But this was someone going after the scammer. That was a twist in the beginning, too. You don’t realize at first that this person being scammed is also scamming.

Well, there’s a boom going on right now around this topic. I think the New York Times did a good interactive piece about online vigilantes. Not quite scam-baiters, but similar.

I’ve brought this story up because I want people to know that 1843 has the capacity to do fun stories and not just serious ones about cults and narco-states! Scamming is quite an economic story, but that’s not the focus in the piece; online vigilantes, who have taken advantage of how lucrative scamming has become, are much more instinctively fun to read about.

The writer, Barclay Bram, works at The Economist. He’s a really talented podcast producer, among many other things. This piece came out of a very organic conversation. I think it was after that viral Cut essay came out about the financial columnist being scammed. And then there were maybe one or two other scamming stories that I read that week. In one of our weekly ideas meetings, I was chatting with everyone, and Barclay happened to be there.

He and I started side-barring about what was interesting to us about scamming, and he began to find out more about scam-baiters. He also decided to turn it into a Weekend Intelligence podcast. He was able to do different layers of reporting, and get voice recordings from people for the podcast. Because we’re office colleagues, this was an especially pleasurable piece to work on; we could just chat about edits in person. I think the final piece turned out really nicely, and it complements other things The Economist has been doing on scamming recently, like the Scam Inc. podcast series.

So you meet weekly with your team to pitch ideas?

We meet twice a week. Once to talk about pitches, either from people we’re actively working with or cold pitches. And the other meeting is for general ideas. Most publications do this, but I associate it with my time at The New Yorker. There, you’d go into a meeting, there’d be both a set group of editors and a revolving cast of other staff members, everyone would present three ideas, and from that pool, ideas might get assigned to the magazine’s writers. It’s more casual at 1843, but the general ethos is the same.

All the editors come with a few ideas—or maybe some weeks zero!–– but ideally a few. We discuss them and decide if they’re worth looking into. Most of the time, we haven’t identified a full feature story. Sometimes it's just a new story that we think has good characters or a clear narrative, like with the Kenya cult story. Then we brainstorm about writers. It’s really informal at that stage. If a writer is interested, they’ll do some digging on their own. Then they can come back and say, “I think there’s a story,” or “I don’t think there’s a story.” We might go back and forth a few more times to develop a pitch. It’s a really effective tool for us. We’ve had a lot of good stories come out of editors just reading around.

So editors come with their own ideas, or areas they’re interested in, and then it evolves. A writer might get interested, but it still takes steps to really nail it down. There are a lot of steps to get a piece approved.

Yeah, commissioning takes a long time. These are labor-intensive stories for everyone, so we want to be sure there’s a solid story before diving in. As editors, we know what generally appeals to us or what seems like a natural feature story, but the reporters are the ones on the ground and with expertise. That’s why we turn to them. They’re better placed to say: “This is promising,” or “I know where to look for characters.” Ideally, we draw from both the editor and reporter’s skills to arrive at a pitch that works for the publication.

What are you looking ahead to this year in terms of commissioning? I know people can pitch anything, but how are you thinking about what you’re interested in, especially since these stories take a long time?

One very general genre I’d love to get pitches on—and I feel like I’m slowly carving it out as a beat for myself—is stories that bring together a cultural topic with an economic or geopolitical lens. I’m thinking a lot about Hollywood these days. Hollywood is full of great political and economic stories that are also about cultural production and cultural attitudes. That really interests me, given my background. So, I’d love more stories that fuse those layers. Same goes for “fun” stories. We unironically talk about needing more fun stories. Because we’re linked to The Economist, we tend to commission pretty heavy pieces.

But I’d love stories with a sense of joie de vivre. That can come from the writing. Some writers are just funny and light. Or it can come from the characters themselves, like in the scam-baiters piece, or from the types of narratives—like stolen identity or heist stories. Even if the topic is serious, there’s still that propulsiveness. I’d love to see more pitches like that.

People think of The Economist as very serious, so it’s helpful to know you’re also thinking about cultural angles. When you say culture, that probably encompasses a lot.

I’ve been thinking about industries that have a kind of connoisseurship to them. I’m working on a few stories right now that fall into that category. Basically, I’m interested in stories where there's a subculture, with a group of really committed academics, experts, or enthusiasts behind it.

Ideally, with features, you're diving into a world you don’t know much about. I’m drawn to any topic that engages with what people spend a lot of their time, energy, or money on, whether it’s an object or a pursuit. Those are fruitful areas to explore—where broader economic or social contexts intersect with personal stories, characters, and complex human emotions.