Rhana Natour says Each Story Is Its Own Storm
Rhana Natour takes us inside her pitch for her National Magazine Award-winning Atavist story "Coming to America."
To my fellow Pitchers! Or Pitch Clubbers!
The first issue with Nick Davidson was great and I got wonderful feedback on the concept of Pitch Club. I think we’re onto something here.
Let’s not waste your time.
Rhana Natour (@rnatourious on IG) is an award-winning journalist who works primarily in the video sphere, but it was her piece for The Atavist Magazine, “Coming to America,” that won her a National Magazine Award for profile writing. She crafted this story along side the brilliant documentary photographer and photojournalist Eman Mohammed (@emanit on IG), whose visuals elevated this incredible story about the war in Gaza and the toll it’s taking on pediatric amputees, Leyan Albaz being the central figure of this piece.
Whereas Nick’s pitch was north of 1,500 words, Rhana’s was just 422.
OK, let’s hit it!
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An opening thought from Rhana …
PITCH: An Uncertain Future: The children who lost limbs in Gaza with no place to go
Over the past two months an American charity called “Heal Palestine'' airlifted four severely injured children from Gaza to the U.S for life-saving medical treatment. They are all amputees, some are severely burned and all have lost immediate family members in this war. This feature story and photo essay would focus on one of these children: 14 year old Leyan.
In mid-March Leyan left Gaza alone for Chicago where she will live for at least the next six months. In this period she will be faced with the realities of her new life as a double amputee. She will be fitted and trained in how to use prosthetic legs, a process known to be mentally and physically challenging.
The tragedy that took her legs happened in November. Leyan went to see her sister who had just given birth to a healthy baby girl. Soon after Leyan arrived an Israeli airstrike hit the home killing both of Leyan’s sisters and her two-day old niece. Leyan lost her left foot and her entire right leg. Across the bridge of her nose is a wishbone-shaped scar from the blast.
While in Chicago Leyan will stay with the Assafs, an Arab-American family with three daughters, two of whom are close to her age. Leyan’s interactions and blossoming relationship with her host family will also be captured in this story.
On April 15th Leyan will start 2 weeks of in-patient treatment at Shriners Children's Chicago hospital under the care of [name redacted for privacy], a specialist in pediatric rehabilitation. We will capture the ups and downs of this journey and also use it as an opportunity to broaden out Leyan’s story. Some observers estimate that the number of child amputees in Gaza today is the biggest cohort of pediatric amputees in history.
Lastly, there is an open question in Leyan’s story that makes her time in the U.S and the relationships she forms here even more high-stakes. And that is that no one knows if it will be safe enough for Leyan to return home to Gaza in six months or who from her family will still be alive to welcome her.
Reporting plan/Chicago:
We plan to both spend a total of 4 nights in Chicago for this story. Our plan is to spend 2 days with Leyan at home with her host family and two days with her in the hospital. Her in-patient stint starts on April 15th.
Final Thoughts from Rhana
Amazing, right? If you dug this, if you learned something, please share, talk it up, and, of course, subscribe. You’re now tasked with reading Rhana’s story “Coming to America.”
I hang out on social media @creativenonfictionpodcast on IG and @brendanomeara.bsky.social on Bluesky.
Happy pitching,
Brendan
Postscript
Hey, OK-but-listen-though: Pitch Club will always be free. I will never paywall a learning resource and gate-keep someone’s capacity to learn and improve. That said, this takes quite a bit of time and if you want to support me, buy copies of The Front Runner: The Life of Steve Prefontaine (Mariner Books) and subscribe to The Creative Nonfiction Podcast (wherever you get your podcasts). By selling books and growing my platform, that gets me paid. So a book purchase (and requisite rating and review) or subscribing to this or the podcast is a form of currency. Platform = payment.