A Q&A on Longform with Esquire’s Mike Sager

For every story he writes, Mike Sager, writer-at-large for Esquire, finds a way to love his subjects. From drug addicts to porn stars, military vets to once-great athletes, Sager has let them all shape him into the journalist he is today. Here, Sager talks about what makes a solid longform piece and reveals some of his secrets to the craft. In addition: a close look into the making of his 1992 Rolling Stone piece “Revenge of the Doughnut Boys,” which is about teenage car hijackers in Newark, N.J. It is also the title piece in his Los Angeles Times Best-Seller, one of Sager’s four collections of riveting longform journalism. Through it all, it comes down to one thing, he says: “Getting shit right.”