New Hope’s freelance writers pick favorite stories of 2023

It takes a special person to be a freelance reporter and writer.

First, you have to accept that your income will vary—sometimes wildly—based on people and events over which you have absolutely no control. You need the self-confidence to sell your work to editors and publishers that, in many cases, you’ve never met and might never meet face to face.

And you absolutely must have the self-discipline to work, nose to the keyboard, instead of finding oh-so-many-other things to do on the computer that is both your work tool and your window to the world.

Fortunately, we New Hope editors have found several excellent freelancers who have these qualities and more: They write beautiful, descriptive stories that pull readers into the lives of natural products entrepreneurs and retailers. They ask the necessary questions of experts and investors so they can understand and explain complicated subjects. And they turn in well-written, clean copy that helps us share with the New Hope audiences what is important in this industry.

As we started planning our holiday coverage, we decided to ask our freelancers which of the many stories they wrote this year are their favorites. In this gallery, we share with you not only those stories, but the reasons why they are special to our writers. We hope you find some of your favorites here, too.