Jessica Pressler writes for New York, Elle and GQ. "I really like hustlers, stories about someone who comes out of nowhere and tries to do it for themselves. Those people are just easy to like. Even when they're sort of terrible, they're easy to like."

Wendy MacNaughton is a graphic journalist and the co-author of Pen & Ink: Tattoos and the Stories Behind Them. "We mostly hear stories from big personalities who already have a spotlight on them. I think that everybody carries stories that are just as pr

Don Van Natta Jr., a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner, writes for ESPN and is the author of several books, including Wonder Girl. "The nature of the kind of work I do as an investigative reporter, every story you do is going to get attacked and the tires

Today we are re-airing our February 2013 interivew with our friend Matt Power, who died earlier this year while on assignment in Uganda, to help raise money for Matthew Power Literary Reporting Award. We have also reprinted Matt's classic 2005 article, "

Anne Helen Petersen writes for BuzzFeed. Her book Scandals of Classic Hollywood is out this week. "I was obsessed with Entertainment Weekly from the very first issue and I obsessively catalogued it. I made a database on my Apple IIe where I put in the ti

Chris Hayes hosts All In with Chris Hayes on MSNBC and is an editor-at-large for The Nation. "The instability was so intense and the anguish and frustration were so intense that there wasn’t a ton of time to think through, 'Well, what is my role in this?

Buzz Bissinger, a Pulitzer Prize winner, has written for Vanity Fair, The New York Times Magazine, GQ and more. He is the author of several books, including Friday Night Lights. "It’s quiet. And I really felt I needed that quiet. People say, 'Well anger

Sean Wilsey has written for The New Yorker, The London Review of Books, The New York Times, and McSweeney’s Quarterly, where he is an editor-at-large. His latest book is More Curious. "I’m actually apparently a fairly competent person at getting things d

Emily Bazelon is a staff writer at the New York Times Magazine and the author of Sticks and Stones. "There’s nothing purely, or maybe even at all, altruistic about this exchange. It’s transactional in the Janet Malcolm classical sense, but also in the em

Zach Baron is a staff writer for GQ. "People love to put celebrity stuff or culture stuff lower on the hierarchy than, say, a serial killer story. I think they're all the same story. If you crack the human, you crack the human." Thanks to TinyLetter and

Ben Anderson is a war journalist and documentary filmmaker. His latest book, The Interpreters, is available free from Vice. "You're surrounded by people who are so poor. Maybe their family members have already been killed. And they still can't leave. So

Lewis Lapham, formerly the editor of Harper's, is the founder of Lapham's Quarterly. "The best part of my job was to come across a manuscript. You never knew what would show up. ... I always had the sense of opening a present, hoping to be both delighted

Adam Higginbotham has written for Businessweek, Wired and The New Yorker. His latest story is A Thousand Pounds of Dynamite, for The Atavist. "There's always a narrative in a crime story. Something has always gone wrong. These guys are always in prison,

Brin-Jonathan Butler has written for SB Nation, ESPN, and The New York Times. His new book is A Cuban Boxer’s Journey. "He smiled at me and just to make small talk, I said, 'You know, you’ve got this gold grill on your teeth. Where did you get that from?

Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah has written for The Believer, The LA Review of Books, Transition and The Paris Review. "If He Hollers Let Him Go," her essay on Dave Chappelle, was a 2014 National Magazine Award finalist. "So the stakes are high. I’m not just writi

A look back at some of our favorite moments from the first 99. Thanks to our sponsors, TinyLetter and Squarespace. Show Notes: [4:45] #3: David Grann [7:00] #4: Jon Mooallem [10:10] #7: Ta-Nehisi Coates [14:15] #9: Jeanne Marie Laskas [12:32] #10: C

John Heilemann is the managing editor of Bloomberg Politics and the co-author of Game Change and Double Down. "If you're a writer, and you're not an asshole, you want the maximum number of people to read your stuff. There's nothing wrong with that. There

George Saunders has written for The New Yorker and GQ. His latest collection of short stories is Tenth of December. "Maybe you would understand your artistry to be: put me anywhere. I'll find human beings, I'll find human interest, I'll find literature.

Sarah Nicole Prickett is the founding editor of Adult. "I'll admit to being resistant to the 'by women for women' label that Adult had before because I saw it as being just 'by women,' period. That’s way more feminist than making something for women, whi

Ta-Nehisi Coates is a senior editor at The Atlantic. His latest cover story is "The Case for Reparations." "The writer hopes for change, but writers can't assume that their work is going to cause change." Thanks to TinyLetter and I Am Zlatan, the intern

Nathaniel Rich writes for Rolling Stone, Harper's and the New York Times Magazine. His latest novel is Odds Against Tomorrow. "I'm drawn to obsession. I think I'm an obsessive in a way, probably most writers are. It's an obsessive act to sit at a desk by

Wesley Morris, a Pulitzer Prize winner, covers film at Grantland. "That's what writing about race and popular culture is for me: it's crime reporting. It's not me looking for an agenda when I go to the movies ... but I feel a moral responsibility to repo

Gary Smith retired last month after more than 30 years of writing for Sports Illustrated. "We were on the Santa Monica Freeway, Ali's driving 70 miles an hour and his eyes are drifting asleep—the medication for Parkinson's would do that to him. I'm think

Michael Paterniti, a correspondent for GQ, has also written for Esquire, Rolling Stone and Outside. His latest book is The Telling Room. "I want to see it, whatever it is. If it's war, if it's suffering, if it's complete, unbridled elation, I just want t

Leslie Jamison has written for The Believer, Harper's and The New York Times. Her latest book is The Empathy Exams. "I sort of love imagining a small army of 22-year-old men who are just like, 'Fuck that book, I wish it was never published.'" Thanks to