Writing
Recently Published Work*
A handful of Cherry-picked examples from the past year
The Washington Post
Googling ‘oldest structure in the Americas’ leads to heaps of debate
An in-depth dig into the controversy surrounding the age of the LSU Campus Mounds and the effects of the Information Age on the scientific process.
Garden & Gun
How an Arkansas bookstore preserves what gets left behind in used books
At Dickson Street Bookshop, time capsules capture misplaced, lost, and discarded treasures.
Arkansas Advocate
Southwest Arkansas and the promise of ‘green’ lithium extraction
A two-part investigation into the promise and possible environmental peril of lithium extraction in Southwest Arkansas.
Garden & Gun
The Good Earther: Adam Chappell
An inspiring farmer goes soil deep to prove what’s old is new again
Arkansas Advocate
Concern over possible Buffalo National River redesignation draws huge crowd to small Arkansas town
Most speakers voice fears of what a national park preserve would do to area already stressed by visitors
Garden & Gun
This small Arkansas town would like to keep its eight-hundred-pound meteorite, please
Nearly a century after it crashed to Earth in Northeast Arkansas, the Paragould meteorite finds its way home
Longreads
The Expanding Table
For one baker and educator in Northwest Arkansas, food is a connection to her family’s roots in Gaza—and an essential way to share the stories of their culture.
The Washington Post
How two smart people fell for a classic Facebook scam
After one man loses control of his social media account, an acquaintance gets bilked out of $5,000
Garden & Gun
Meet the Meat Loaf Lady of Bella Vista, Arkansas
How a supermarket cook and her many Facebook fans stirred up a foil-wrapped frenzy
Arkansas PBS
The Growing Season
A year-long podcast that examined the intersection between agriculture and mental heath through the lens of six Arkansas farmers.
Arkansas Advocate
Chicken farms hide in plain sight under Arkansas law
Legislation passed nearly 20 years ago has allowed Arkansas poultry operations to fly under the radar. A recently decided court case may change that.
GArden & Gun
Champions of Conservation: Seed of change
Hallie Shoffner heralds the effects of climate extremes from her family’s research spread
Not-As-Recent-But-Still-Personal-Fave Work
A selection of award-winning feature writing from my days at arkansas Life
Reconnecting Terry
In 2003, Terry Wallis spoke for the first time in two decades. This feature took an intimate look at how his life had changed 10 years later, and the radically different role he’d played—a son, a father, and a grandfather—in the lives of those who knew and loved him. To spend time with Terry was to realize there was an awareness that at first, second, third glances wasn’t immediately apparent—like a cork bobbing beneath the surface—but which appeared in full when a joke was cracked, and he began laughing, head lolling, the glimmer of total understanding in every hoarse and breathy laugh.
What Lies Beneath
Before the construction of Arkansas's Blakely Mountain Dam was completed in the 1950s, the islands that now dot Lake Ouachita were hilltops. Looking out over the water, it’s tempting to say that there’s nothing left—and that the communities that now lay beneath the water are gone forever. But for those people who once called places like Buckville home—and who’ve gathered on the shore for 75 years, the closest they can get to going home again—there’s more than meets the eye.
MLK Gets His Day (or The Passion of Kelly Duda)
On April 16, 1985, then-Gov. Bill Clinton signed House Bill 132, which declared that both Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Robert E. Lee Day would be celebrated on the third Monday in January. More than three decades later, Gov. Asa Hutchinson signed Senate Bill 519, separating the two. To say that many people played a part in getting the state to that place, both publicly and behind the curtain, would be to grossly understate the point; this is the years-long story of one of them.
*For even more writing, click here.
