LONGFORM

War of Words,” Texas Monthly, April 2018
In 2014, Russell Bonner Bentley was a middle-aged arborist living in Austin. Now he’s a local celebrity in a war-torn region of Ukraine—and a foot soldier in Russia’s information war.

 

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Ruffled Feathers,” Texas Monthly, Sept. 2016
When a teenage boy brazenly shot two endangered whooping cranes outside Beaumont, his act unleashed widespread anger and resulted in a quick arrest—and revealed just how difficult it can be to save a species.

Unfriendly Climate,” Texas Monthly, May 2016
Katharine Hayhoe is one of the most respected experts on global warming in the country. She’s also an evangelical Christian who is trying to connect with the very people who most doubt her research. Too bad the temperature keeps rising.

The Road to Damascus,” Texas Monthly, October 2015
In 2012 Houston native Austin Tice heeded a calling to become a journalist in war-ravaged Syria. His photographs, stories, and tweets shed new light on the conflict—until one day they stopped.

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A Tree Is Known By Its Fruit,” Texas Monthly, January 2015
When Bonnie Harkey, the 85-year-old matriarch of a prominent San Saba family, was brutally murdered in 2012, her death spelled the end of a legendary pecan dynasty. It also uncovered a dark tale of family, greed, and hate.

churchofwellsSinners in the Hands,” Texas Monthly, February 2014  
Twenty-seven-year-old Catherine Grove is a member of a small, insular, and eccentric church in East Texas. Her parents think she’s being brainwashed. She insists she’s being saved.

 

OTHER FAVORITES

‘How Would an Ethical Officer React?’” New York Times Magazine, August 17, 2017
A new class of Dallas recruits trains to step into an uneasy moment in American policing.

A Home of Last Resort,” Texas Monthly, May 2017
Breaking ground— and betting big—on a doomsday community for the rich.

For the Mouth Speaks,” Texas Monthly, May 21, 2015
Catherine Grove walked away from the Church of Wells last month. Now, she and the elders of the East Texas church explain why she left—and why she returned to the congregation that many call a cult.

Asylum Politics,” Texas Monthly, August 2014
Why did dozens of Sikh detainees in a federal facility in El Paso go on hunger strike in April?

The Younger Years of the Church Elders,” Texas Monthly, March 5, 2014
Sean Morris and Ryan Ringnald, both in their late twenties, are leaders of the conservative, 90-person Church of Wells, which many consider to be a cult. This doesn’t come as a surprise to a number of peers who knew them during their college years at Baylor.

Pakistan Is Using Smartphones to Stop Dengue,” Slate, June 6, 2014
Could smartphones help increase the accountability of government workers and stamp out outbreaks of dengue fever? A dispatch from Lahore, Pakistan.

A Mayor of Many Worlds,” Texas Monthly, May 1, 2014
Born in Pakistan and raised in Abu Dhabi, the mayor of Paris, Texas, Dr. Arjumand Hashmi, tackles city business in between patient visits and holds the distinction of making the small East Texas city a medical destination for former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf.

Wandering Oswald,Texas Monthly, October 22, 2013
An interview with Peter Savodnik, author of “The Interloper: Lee Harvey Oswald Inside the Soviet Union.”

The Last Days of Tolstoy’s People,” Roads & Kingdoms, August 23, 2013
Leo Tolstoy so admired the Doukhobors, a remote pacifist sect in the highlands of Georgia, he tried to shield them from the modern world. Now only 500 of them remain.

Greetings from the Texas of Kazakhstan,” Texas Monthly, August 6, 2013
Why Shymkent, a city in South Kazakhstan, proudly thinks of itself as the Lone Star State of Central Asia.

Dancing the Apocalypse Away, Extravagantly,” New York Times, December 29, 2012
To commemorate the Mayan Apocalypse, video game tycoon Richard Garriott de Cayeux threw a lavish soiree at his 65-acre spread along Lake Austin, complete with various imagined end-of-the-world scenarios.

Crime and Publishing,” Texas Monthly, October 2012
Inside a small-town paper’s police blotter.

Day After Day, Her Voice Takes Listeners to the Stars,” New York Times, October 29, 2011 
San Antonio’s Sandy Wood has been the voice of StarDate for twenty years.

Have a Coke and an Antiretroviral,” Slate, June 9, 2011
A dispatch from Tanzania about at a new pilot program that aims to make anti-retroviral drugs as easily accessible as a bottle of soda by tapping into Coca-Cola’s established delivery network throughout east African nation.