The 3 Narratively Stories I Tell Strangers About

If you’re ever on a plane and you unwittingly signal your love of storytelling to the chatty CEO in 24A, these are the pieces you’ll find yourself being pitched.

Let’s face it: As Narratively’s chief, my number one job is to be our company’s unabashed champion and cheerleader. One way this boundless passion manifests itself (just ask my eye-rolling yet very supportive wife!) is in my constant pitching of Narratively — to folks sitting next to me on airplanes, bookish types in line at the Strand, the waiter opening my bottle of rosé who just happens to conveniently mention the screenplay they’re working on. In explaining Narratively’s reason for being — supporting diverse, indie storytellers and celebrating and connecting people across the world through their work — I have over 2,000 original Narratively stories to choose from as examples. Yet I find myself going back to these same three stories time and time again. It’s partially because they represent the trio of categories we love to publish: Memoir, Deep Dives and Secret Lives — which amount to a veritable rabbit hole of humanity that we strongly encourage you to journey down! But it’s mostly because they’re just truly great pieces that never fail to raise an eyebrow and lots of thoughtful questions, and they each feature extraordinary people and unexpected, misunderstood and controversial subcultures at their core. 

So, close your eyes, imagine we’re on stools (the rare comfy kind) at your local bar, or on a flight going somewhere far away (anywhere to escape this NYC humidity!) and you’ve just let slip that you’re a lover of good stories. Here’s my little reading list for you:

3. My High School Girlfriend Became America’s Most Wanted Drug Queenpin

In this riveting first-person piece by journalist Jon Reiss — which falls into a genre I’ve taken to calling “true-crime romance” — he goes on a highly emotional quest to reconnect with his lost love and figure out why in the world she broke bad. A really fun read that is both thrilling and heartbreaking, I highly recommend this to fans of Walter White and Nora Ephron alike. 

2. Legends Never Die

If you were alive in the ’90s, and/or if you fancy yourself someone who’s plugged in to culture, chances are you’ve heard of a little movie called Kids. It was the first NC-17-rated film I’d ever known about, let alone seen, and it provocatively featured a group of real-life skateboarding teens and their crew of friends navigating a fictionalized version of their actual lives in NYC — with lots of sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll (as well as devastating sexual assault and poverty). Especially for a micro-budget indie, Kids had a massive influence, launching the careers of future stars Chloë Sevigny and Rosario Dawson. New York Times critic Janet Maslin christened it a “new strain of post-apocalyptic science fiction” that portrayed the terrible state of youth in urban America. Nearly 20 years after the film’s debut, intrepid Narratively writer Caroline Rothstein posed the question: “What ever happened to the kids from Kids!?” Well, her deeply reported and haunting piece delivers a resounding answer.

OK, this last “story I tell strangers about” is truly the pièce de résistance. Just the title alone is a jaw-dropper for literally everyone, and their reaction is always as follows, to a tee: My captivated stranger quickly leans forward, eyes as giant as a kid who’s just accidentally watched their first nude scene in a movie, and then, without fail, they immediately start chuckling and nodding, or shaking their head, or some combination of both, and their body language couldn’t be clearer: “Now that’s a story!” they’re saying, without saying a single word…