About Me

I’m an award-winning editor with a passion for quirky, illuminating, and inspiring stories—particularly those that have the power to help make the world a better place. I have over twenty years of editorial experience and have helped countless authors do some of their best work. Like most editors, I like working behind the scenes, coaxing writers toward more perfect stories that will have a strong impact on readers and get noticed in the busy marketplace of ideas. My clients are individuals, publishers, NGOs, and corporations looking to expand their storytelling capacity.

I am currently the editor in chief of High Country News, where I lead a team of fifteen to produce a monthly magazine about the West. I recently served as deputy editor at Patagonia, where I worked to publish stories in service of the company’s mission to save our home planet. Prior to that, I was executive editor of Pacific Standard, where I led a redesign of the print magazine and was responsible for longform features and story packages. I spent many formative years at Orion magazine, culminating in twelve years as editor, during which time the magazine received two Utne Independent Press Awards for General Excellence and two National Magazine Award nominations. I edited Terry Tempest Williams’s three-part series “The Open Space of Democracy,” which became a book bearing the same title, as well as two chapters that appear in her book The Hour of Land. I edited Rebecca Solnit’s column The Faraway Nearby, six installments of which appear in her collection Storming the Gates of Paradise. I edited short fiction from David James Duncan, Pam Houston, and two stories from Luis Alberto Urrea’s collection The Water Museum. And that is just a sampling.

Stories I’ve edited have received a National Magazine Award, the Pushcart Prize (x8), the John Burroughs Nature Essay Award (x4),  and the O. Henry Prize (x2). Nine stories I edited have been reprinted in the Best American Science and Nature Writing anthology and an additional fifteen have been listed as notable. Twenty-four stories I’ve edited have been either reprinted or listed as notable in Best American Essays. In addition, my stories are regularly featured in the "Top Five Longreads of the Week" series.

I have also edited the following books:

The Haida Gwaii Lesson, by Mark Dowie, 2017
Thirty-Year Plan: Thirty Writers on What We Need to Build a Better Future, 2012
Place-Based Education, by David Sobel, 2005
The Open Space of Democracy, by Terry Tempest Williams, 2004