The Best American Newspaper Narratives, Volume 8

This anthology collects the ten winners of the 2020 Best American Newspaper Narrative Writing Contest at UNT's Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference. First place winner: Christopher Goffard, 'Detective Trapp' (Los Angeles Times) is about a complicated murder investigation and its human impact. Second place: Annie Gowen, 'Left Behind: American Farm Families in Crisis during Trump's Trade War' (The Washington Post) tells about a despairing farmer's suicide and aftermath. Third place: Jennifer Berry Hawes and Stephen Hobbs, 'It's Time for You to Die' (Post & Courier) presents a gut-wrenching drama of America's deadliest episode of prison violence.

Runners-up include Peter Jamison, 'The Confession' (The Washington Post); Mark Johnson, 'House Calls and Rarest of Diseases' (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel); Nestor Ramos, 'At the Edge of a Warming World' (Boston Globe); Noelle Crombie, Kale Williams, and Beth Nakamura, 'No Mercy' (The Oregonian); Tara Duggan and Jason Fagone, 'The Fisherman's Tale' (San Francisco Chronicle); Jenna Russell, 'Brilliant, Faithful, Undaunted' (Boston Globe); and Charles Scudder, 'Guardians: When Evil Came Through the Door' (Dallas Morning News).