About

Hello, and thank you for visiting my website

I am an award-winning journalist and professor. I direct the low-residency MFA in Narrative Nonfiction and am the Charlayne Hunter-Gault writer in residence at the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication. I teach my students how to become stronger storytellers and urge them to embrace in-depth journalism as literature grounded in fact. Before UGA, I taught at the University of Florida, where I was honored as the 2020 Teacher of the Year.

I began my career in journalism in 1983 at a small, community newspaper. I have worked at various media outlets, among them CNN and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. I now work as a freelance reporter and editor. You can find my stories in various magazines and digital media outlets. I published an e-book, Chaplain Turner’s War, which grew out of a series of newspaper stories about an Army chaplain during the height of the Iraq War. My other claim to fame is that I was once featured in the Marvel Comics series Civil war.

I was born in Kolkata, India, and grew up straddling cultures. We lived in several different countries when I was growing up and I had to learn how to assimilate quickly. Those experiences made me wildly curious about people, especially those with vastly different lives than my own.

I still love to travel and as I grow older, I find myself increasingly impatient to experience places I have not yet visited. My daily solace comes from long walks in my tree-filled Atlanta neighborhood, sometimes with my furry son Gizmo.

I post random thoughts and essays on this site. I hope you enjoy reading them.