UNT Press

About Reaves's The Best American Newspaper Narratives, Volume 12

This anthology collects the eight winners of the 2024 Best American Newspaper Narrative Writing Contest at UNT’s Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference. First place winner: Bridget Grumet for “The Butterfly Effect,” a series examining both the problem of teen dating violence and the operation of the Texas prison system through the lens of three people whose lives were changed by the 2003 murder of a 15-year-old (Austin American-Statesman). Second place: Keri Blakinger for “The Dungeons & Dragons Players of Death Row” (New York Times). Third place: Edgar Sandoval for “Two Children, a Burst of Gunfire and the Year That Came After” (New York Times).

Runners-up include Peter Jamison, “The Revolt of Christian Homeschoolers” (The Washington Post); Sydney Brownstone, “Lost Patients” (Seattle Times); Suzette Hackney, “American Contagion” (USA TODAY); Connor Sheets, “From a One-Way Flight to Sleeping in a Parking Lot” (Los Angeles Times); and Rick Jervis, “We Don’t Seem to Learn” (USA TODAY).