The Professor Who Gave Literary Journalism Its Name and Its Future
Norman Sims spent 35 years at UMass Amherst building a field from scratch editing anthologies, mentoring students, and proving that narrative nonfiction belonged in the classroom alongside hard news.
Most histories treat literary journalism as a genre that *emerged* a slow blossoming of narrative techniques within reporting. But Norman Sims didn't wait for a movement to coalesce; he *created* the very framework for understanding literary journalism as a distinct discipline. In the early 1980s, while others debated its legitimacy, Sims acted decisively to define and document a field that many weren't convinced even existed. He was 36 years old when The Literary Journalists appeared in 1984, an anthology that...
Read more