About me

I’m a writer whose essays and reportage appear in the New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, London Review of Books, and the New York Times Book Review. I’ve written cover stories for the New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, and Mother Jones. My essay about traveling through Africa with two of the world’s greatest hitchhikers is a “notable” selection in Best American Travel Writing 2019 and my essay about living in a shack in Oakland is a “notable” selection in Best American Essays 2020. I’m at work on a book about housing for Penguin Press.

For just shy of ten years I worked as a magazine editor, most recently at Harper’s, where I’m currently a contributing editor. I teach in Columbia’s nonfiction MFA program, and I’ve held posts as a Middlebury Fellow in Environmental Journalism and an 11th Hour Food and Farming Fellow at UC Berkeley. I grew up proudly lumpenproletariat in the Adirondack mountains of upstate New York.

For queries about my work, you can contact Jin Auh at the Wylie Agency, or message me below.