How Hargrove came to write for the Reader:
My first published article in the Reader was for a writing contest I entered in 2007. The contest: Write a story that best describes your neighborhood. I wrote about the bodybuilding couple that lived across the courtyard from us on 6th Avenue in Hillcrest. What seemed like every third or fourth night, the men would erupt in some of the loudest and angriest fights. They would yell. They threw cell phones from the second story balcony. We could hear their sobs from across the courtyard, even through the double-paned glass of our living room window. My wife and I would turn off the lights and peek through the curtains to see the action. I wrote about the fights, about the night when they broke it off for good, when Gus, one of the men stated, "There's no more us, there's just Gus."
I didn't win the contest. I won much more. I won the opportunity to write for the Reader, which I did for nearly 12 years. During that time Jim Holman, Ernie Grimm, Matt Potter, and others guided me on my quest from an aspiring novelist to a journalist. They encouraged me to read books, to write in the active voice, to ditch all the adverbs and adjectives. Most of all they encouraged me to find original stories, stories that had not been reported. I did just that. They told me when I was on to something and they told me, very nicely, when I was not. They stood by my side when my life changed in the blink of an eye while skateboarding with my dog.
How Hargrove came to write for the Reader:
My first published article in the Reader was for a writing contest I entered in 2007. The contest: Write a story that best describes your neighborhood. I wrote about the bodybuilding couple that lived across the courtyard from us on 6th Avenue in Hillcrest. What seemed like every third or fourth night, the men would erupt in some of the loudest and angriest fights. They would yell. They threw cell phones from the second story balcony. We could hear their sobs from across the courtyard, even through the double-paned glass of our living room window. My wife and I would turn off the lights and peek through the curtains to see the action. I wrote about the fights, about the night when they broke it off for good, when Gus, one of the men stated, "There's no more us, there's just Gus."
I didn't win the contest. I won much more. I won the opportunity to write for the Reader, which I did for nearly 12 years. During that time Jim Holman, Ernie Grimm, Matt Potter, and others guided me on my quest from an aspiring novelist to a journalist. They encouraged me to read books, to write in the active voice, to ditch all the adverbs and adjectives. Most of all they encouraged me to find original stories, stories that had not been reported. I did just that. They told me when I was on to something and they told me, very nicely, when I was not. They stood by my side when my life changed in the blink of an eye while skateboarding with my dog.
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