The Open Notebook • 5th February 2019

Elaina Plott Explores Everyday Life on a Sinking Island

The biggest problem about climate change is, naturally, climate change. But the second biggest is that climate change has basically become boring. Not boring in substance, but in surfeit: There’s just too much of it to consume with nuance.

Nieman Storyboard • 30th January 2018

5(ish) Questions: Richard Marosi and 'Without a Country'

As conversations about undocumented immigrants erode into partisan debates and decisions about many thousands of futures are reduced to bargaining chips, it’s also easy to lose sight of what stories have come before, when readers were perhaps paying less attention.

Nieman Storyboard • 14th December 2017

5(ish) Questions: Liana Aghajanian and the story of immigrants in America, one recipe at a time

The foods she grew up eating now guide her reporting about the others who made them, ate them, remembered them, preserved them. “Dining in Diaspora” uncovers the stories of old...

Nieman Storyboard • 14th September 2017

5(ish) Questions: Abbie Gascho Landis and the surprising climate book 'Immersion'

The book is about mussels, of course, but also about everything they’re connected to, which is to say: everything.

Nieman Storyboard • 23rd August 2017

5(ish) Questions: Mandy Len Catron and “How to Fall in Love With Anyone”

That piece launched Catron’s newest endeavor, “How to Fall in Love With Anyone,” a collection of essays that ask questions about love, yes, but also about what we talk about...

Montana Standard • 9th July 2017

Folk Festival profiles: Doreen's Jazz, Kenan Adnawi, Balinese All Stars

With her purple-streaked braids and glittery silver drum set, 14-year-old drummer Dorian Ketchens-Dixon appears to be living a teenage fantasy of onstage stardom. She even got to hang out with...

Montana Standard • 8th July 2017

Folk Festival profiles: Troy De Roche, the Maguires, the Hermanos Herrera

Unpacking their instruments on Friday morning, the Maguire family discovered that some habits from back home in Ireland wouldn’t hold up in Butte’s high temperatures this weekend. For example: the...

Montana Standard • 8th July 2017

It's a festival of flavor as well as melody

Handing her husband Bob a spatula, Evelyn Hammond instructs him to stir the pot of beans cooking in the back of the tent. "Mueve," she says, then turns back to...

Nieman Storyboard • 20th April 2017

5 Questions: Anne Helen Petersen and the white supremacists who came for Whitefish

In January, as white nationalists threatened to descend on the idyllic ski town of Whitefish, Montana, Petersen made her way out west to see what was happening for herself. In...

Nieman Storyboard • 9th February 2017

5(ish) Questions: Inara Verzemnieks and 'Life in Obamacare's Dead Zone'

Even the existence of facts has been dragged up for debate in the current bitterly partisan climate. Common ground is elusive. Truth gets dismissed as immaterial. Verzemnieks’ story is a...

Montana Journalism Review • 4th December 2016

The Newsletter Queen

Ann Friedman learned the hard way that she’d gotten too popular. When her weekly email newsletter wouldn’t send one Friday, tech support broke the news that she’d passed the subscriber...

LA Review of Books • 26th October 2016

A Blank Page as Big as the World: An Interview with Vanessa Hua

Like the apocryphal frogs splashing in warming water until the inevitable end, the characters in Vanessa Hua’s debut get into their predicaments first slowly, then very fast.

Slice Magazine • 10th March 2016

An Interview with Mira Ptacin | Slice and Dice

Mira Ptacin’s debut memoir, about the grief of losing an unexpected pregnancy at twenty-eight, is not depressing. This might be surprising; between that event and the braided-in story of her...

Stanford University • 4th January 2016

Connections and Community: Elvira Prieto's "An (Im)possible Life"

If you ask Elvira Prieto her secret to publishing a book for the first time while juggling her full-time job and—she laughs—her other full-time job, she'll tell you: “Quite honestly,...

The Billfold • 27th November 2012

Going Back to the Land: An Interview with the Stewards of Shii Koeii Community Farm

I spent a summer bathing in cloudy creek water, battling pugnacious roosters with self-defense techniques meant for dark city streets, and making goat cheese pretty much directly from the udders...