The Best American Newspaper Narratives, Volume 13

This anthology collects the eight winners of the 2025 Best American Newspaper Narrative Writing Contest at UNT's Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference. First place winner: Tom Hallman Jr. and Douglas Perry for "The Last Thing They Wanted," which makes eloquent use of interviews and the subjects' own letters to reconstruct the life and double-suicide death of a beloved and richly accomplished couple in a small town (The Oregonian). Second place: John Woodrow Cox for "Guilty: Inside the High-Risk, Historic Prosecution of a School Shooter's Parents" (The Washington Post). Third place: Christopher Spata and Dan Sullivan for "The Marked Man" (Tampa Bay Times). Runners-up include Gina Barton, "Untested" (USA TODAY); Daniel Beekman, "Two WA Men Were Arrested in Mental Health Crises. Only One Survived" (The Seattle Times); Sabra Ayres and Laura King, "In War-Torn Ukraine, a Woman Searches for Her Husband. Will She Find Him?" (Los Angeles Times); Lane DeGregory, "The Housing Experiment" (Tampa Bay Times); and Steve Fisher, "How a Mennonite Farmer Became a Drug Suspect" (Los Angeles Times).