Today is a discussion of obituaries and writing about a year of loss with Dan Wakin of the NYTimes.
Dan Wakin has been a journalist at The New York Times since 2000.  He currently is an editor on the Obituary News desk, where he has been editing the series "Those We've Lost" on Covid dead. Previously, he was deputy editorial director of NYT Global, a strategic team focused on international audience, and a deputy editor of the Culture desk.
As a reporter, his beats included religion, classical music and dance, and general assignment. He has covered stories in more than a dozen countries in Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Latin America. He helped lead the team that produced the Emmy-nominated multimedia project “Inside the Quartet.”
A graduate of Harvard University with a degree in the classics, Dan is an avid amateur clarinetist. He is the author of “The Man With the Sawed-Off Leg and Other Tales of a New York City Block” (Arcade, 2018).