Reporting on yourself: How memoir can transform trauma into healing

In a departure from her typical beat as a New York Times journalist, Sarah Maslin Nir has turned her reporter’s eye on herself in her new book, “Horse Crazy, the story of a woman and a world in love with an animal” which upacks her and others’ obsession with horses. Nir began riding horses as a two-year-old but it wasn’t until she started writing a memoir about her passion that she realized the role they played in helping her heal from trauma. 

“As a Jew, a daughter of immigrants, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, growing up in New York City, I came to the sport as an outsider, and that really plagued me,” she told Horse Illustrated. “I realize I unpack in the book so much of my compulsion to be the best at it—and to be deeply part of it—was about passing and assimilating.” 

Nir’s memoir, “Horse Crazy,” describes her coming of age as a young woman, a journalist, and a survivor. “Without knowing it,” horses have “been saving me my whole life,” Nir told People magazine. They have even helped her heal from COVID. 

Registration is open now for this free online program, which will be held on Sept. 21, from 11:30 a.m.-12 p.m. Nir will be in conversation with Rukmini Callimachi, a fellow New York Times journalist, Pulitzer Prize finalist, and horse lover. They will discuss: 

• How to reveal (or not reveal) “the personal stuff” as a journalist
• Writing as an outsider – Black cowboys, Breonna Taylor, and equity
• Publishing in a pandemic

About the panelists:

Sarah Maslin Nir has been a staff reporter for The New York Times since August 2011. She currently covers regional news for the paper’s Metro section. Before that, Nir was a beat reporter covering the boroughs of Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan. Nir was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for “Unvarnished,” her more than yearlong investigation into New York City’s nail salon industry that documented, in two parts, the exploitative labor practices and health issues manicurists face. From 2010 until the end of 2011, Ms. Nir was The Times’s “Nocturnalist” columnist, covering New York City’s nightlife. Before becoming a staff member, Ms. Nir freelanced for 11 sections of the paper, traveling to the Alaskan wilderness, in search of people who prefer to live in isolation, and to post-earthquake Haiti. “Horse Crazy” is her first book. 

Rukmini Callimachi joined The New York Times in March 2014 as a foreign correspondent, covering Al Qaeda and ISIS. She is a four-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, including in 2014 for her series of stories based on a cache of internal Qaeda documents she discovered in Mali. She is also the winner of the George Polk Award for International Reporting, multiple Overseas Press Club Awards and the Michael Kelly prize. Before joining The Times, Ms. Callimachi spent seven years covering a 20-country beat in Africa, first as a correspondent and later as West Africa bureau chief for The Associated Press. She began her career as a freelancer in India in 2001, where she was lucky enough to get one of the last seats on a plane to the state of Gujarat on the day of a catastrophic earthquake, filing her first story for Time magazine. 

About NPCJI’s programs:

The National Press Club Journalism Institute has added weekly programming, a daily newsletter, a daily writing group, and other support for journalists since March, and has waived fees for everything due to the COVID-19 pandemic at a savings of more than $52,000 to participants like you. If you value what you’ve been learning from the Institute during this time, please consider a donation of $5, $10, or whatever you can contribute.