Why's this so good?: Banaszynski

[from Nieman Storyboard]

The whole "Why's this so good?" series at the Nieman Storyboard is a great resource for writers. But Jacqui Banaszynski's contribution, "No. 36: Alice Steinbach and one boy's vision", on Steinbach's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1985 piece, "A Boy of Unusual Vision" in the Baltimore Sun (PDF) is magnificent.

In fact, Banaszynski's whole reading list for her Intermediate Writing class, which you can find on the Nieman Storyboard's What's on your syllabus? page, would, with her annotations, be a great way to remind oneself of what writing can be.

Banaszynski won her own Pulitzer for Feature Writing in 1988 "for her moving series about the life and death of an AIDS victim in a rural farm community" in the St Paul Pioneer Press and Dispatch, titled "AIDS in the Heartland" (PDF).