Highways
A journalist for more than twenty-six
years, I've been a reporter, columnist,
editorial writer, magazine writer, sen-
ior editor and writing coach. My work
has appeared in the Chicago Tribune,
Chicago Tribune Magazine, Los Angeles
Times, Washington Post, Baltimore Sun,
Orlando Sentinel and many other publi-
cations. In 1999 I wrote a four-part nar-
Chicago cop that was anthologized in Best Newspaper Writing 2000, whose editors called the story "spellbinding." The series began this way: "They crouched among gnarled trees in the dark, their eyes trained on the entrance of 4101 S. Federal Street, a tattered high-rise in the Robert Taylor Homes.The expressway moaned with traffic." In 2001, the Tribune
assigned me to drive around the country
for three months filing dispatches from the
road about
life in Am-
erica after
the terror-
ist attacks
of Septem-
ber 11. In
2002, my
Tower served as
the centerpiece of
the Tribune’s look back at 9/11 one year later. I've also worked for the San Anto-
nio Express-News, The Cincinnati Enquirer, the Lexington (Kentucky) Herald-Leader, The News-Enterprise and The Post-Crescent, in Ap-
pleton, Wisconsin.
I hold a
Master of
Fine Arts
degree in
writing
from
Spalding
Univer-
sity in
Louisville, Ken-tucky, and a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the Uni-
versity of
Kentucky
in Lexing-
ton, where
I graduat-
ed with
high dis-
tinction
from the honors program in 1984. I'm a 1994 Duke Univer-sity-Knight Ridder Fellow and a 2006 graduate of Harvard Univer-sity’s Nieman Conference for Narrative Editors. You can see my curriculum vitae here.
Room59
The story of a journey
The journey of a story
"Old motels are about heartache and secrets. Consider the mystery of Room 59. Six years ago, an older couple moving to a new town walked out never to return, leaving many of their belongings in the room."
"They
crouched
among
gnarled
trees in the dark,
their eyes
trained on a
tattered high-rise in the Robert
Taylor Homes. The ex-
pressway
moaned with traffic."
