Bio
Jordan P. Hickey is an award-winning, trilingual writer and editor currently residing in Springdale, Arkansas. Before moving to Arkansas, he worked for outlets ranging from Esquire to a small digital start-up called Stry.us in Springfield, Mo. From 2013 to 2018, he worked as senior editor for Arkansas Life magazine in Little Rock, and was editor from 2018 until July 2020, when the magazine was forced to close due to COVID-19-related financial pressures. In 2020, he worked with Pop-Up Magazine to produce a local version of the nationally touring “live magazine” in Little Rock, one of just four pilot projects nationwide.
During his tenure at Arkansas Life, he was named Writer/Journalist of the Year by three separate organizations for submitted bodies of work: Great Plains Journalism Awards (2020); International Regional Magazine Association (2018); Arkansas Society of Professional Journalists (2016). In 2016, he received the Emerging Writer Award from the Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference. In 2019, he was a finalist for Harvard’s Nieman Fellowship.
Past beats have ranged from immigration to “Arkansas,” though he considers himself to be a "passionate generalist” who specializes in stories that exist just outside the frame of mainstream media. In recent years, these stories have included:
… A stack of ownerless photos found beneath a tree.
… A man who spent two decades in a minimally conscious state before “waking” to a new life.
… Among hundreds of other stories he’s written and edited.
Current status: Full-time freelancer for outlets including The Washington Post, Garden & Gun, Arkansas Advocate, Southern Foodways Alliance, Arkansas PBS, among others.
