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).
