I am an award-winning writer and editor focusing on technology and health. My articles, essays, and stories have been published by The Atlantic online, The Common, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Literary Hub, The Millions, Harvard’s Nieman Reports, The New York Times, Orion, Time-Life Books, The Rumpus, Scientific American, Undark, The Verge, The Writer, and others. I am a 2017 Logan Nonfiction Fellow, and a 2017 Mirror Award winner, and also the founding editor and publisher of the award-winning magazine AMC Outdoors and an editor-at-large to the journal Appalachia.

Let’s (Not) Talk About Sex (Boston Magazine)
No, it’s not 1950, but public school parents are once more at odds over what to teach kids when it comes to the birds and the bees. Here we go again….

If Social Media Can Be Unsafe for Kids, What Happens in VR? (Slate’s Future Tense) There is no better time than the present to make sure emerging VR technologies are as safe, responsive, inclusive, and human-centered as possible. Cited by Sen. Markey, Rep. Castor, and Rep. Trahan in February 2022 letter to FTC Chair Lina Khan.

“We Can’t Only Be Mad at Facebook” (Nieman Reports, Harvard Nieman Foundation for Journalism)
Inside the journalistic effort to counter false information to suppress voting and cast doubt on the election.

The Risk Makers (Type Investigations and OneZero)
Viral hate, election interference, and hacked accounts: Inside the tech industry’s decades-long failure to reckon with risk.

Journalism Is Essential (Nieman Reports, Harvard Nieman Foundation for Journalism)
COVID-19 is threatening to extinguish local media, and fueling bold proposals to fund its future.

Speed of Flight (The Common) Fiction, Issue No. 19.

Toward a Wider View of “Nature Writing” (The Los Angeles Review of Books) Disruptions and disasters are part of a wider history, it’s true. Yet so, too, are serenity and discovery, wonder and awe, gratitude and pleasure, the sublime — in other words, the fullness of what it means to be human on this earth.

The Secret Rules of the Internet (The Verge, with Soraya Chemaly, in collaboration with Type Investigations. Illustrated by Eric Petersen.)  2017 Mirror Award Winner, for Best Single Story. Best read at The Atlantic, Buzzfeed, Foreign Policy, and Longreads. Featured interview at MediaShift, with Mark Glaser.

How Do You Fix Facebook’s Moderation Problem? (The Verge, with Soraya Chemaly, in collaboration with Type Investigations.)

How Science Explains Trump’s Grip on White Males (Scientific American and Undark)
Research on risk perception can help us understand the Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol.

Media, Company, Behemoth: What, exactly, is Facebook? (The Verge, with contribution from Soraya Chemaly and Type Investigations.)  Facebook won’t call itself a media company.​ ​Is it time to reimagine journalism for the digital age?

The Unsafety Net (The Atlantic, with Soraya Chemaly)
If, as the communications philosopher Marshall McLuhan famously said, television brought the brutality of war into people’s living rooms, the Internet today is bringing violence against women out of it. Featured by The Globe and Mail, The Huffington Post, The Independent (UK), The Nation, NPR’s On Point, The New York Daily News, and Slate, among others.

Teaching Kids About Sexual Assault (The Atlantic)
At increasingly young ages, programs aim to teach kids kids the language and skills, in age-appropriate ways and over time, necessary for any healthy relationship, skills demonstrated to prevent offending behaviors. Featured by The Journalism Center on Children and Families.

Speak the Name Language (Literary Hub)
Names matter. We have a cabinet that is the most male and the most white in a more than a quarter century, and it is dominated by the likes of Mike, Rex, Steven, James, Jeff, Ryan, Rick…

Pants on Fire: The Genre That Cannot Be Named (The Millions)
Featured by the L.A. Times’ “Jacket Copy” and The Rumpus.

From Orwell to Trump: When Does Egoism Become Narcissism? (Literary Hub)
On the universal trickiness of crafting a persona in writing and otherwise.

The Power of Awe (Orion)
“Awe is as consequential to human adaptation as the stress response, which we take very seriously,” say researchers. “This isn’t just wishy-washy pollyannaishness, but part of our human nervous system.”

Ego, Trip: On Self-Construction—and Destruction—in Creative Nonfiction (Assay: A Journal for Nonfiction Studies)

The Case for Teaching Kids How to Talk about Their Bodies (The Atlantic)
Featured by ThinkProgress, NBC News Today, and Jezebel.

Title Search (The Writer)
What books about writing do you turn to for guidance? What books are you missing? Authors Elmaz Abinader, David Haynes, Gish Jen, and others, discuss what they’re reading and teaching—and why.

Picture This: 23 Simple Ways You Can Contribute to Social Justice Movements (Everyday Feminism)
Social movements rely on multiple, overlapping actors, working across a broad spectrum of engagement, from politicians to school board members, NGO directors to PTA volunteers, protest organizers to protest marchers.

Is That So? (The Rumpus)

There’s a Word for That (The New York Times)

Cold Comfort (The Boston Globe)
Sometimes a movie, sometimes… winter camping. A very fresh take on date night.

This Counts as a School Day (Appalachia Journal)

Conversation Starters (Brain, Child)
Nominated for a 2013 PPFA Maggie Award for Media Excellence and featured by the National Coalition to Prevent Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation

Scientist, Uninterrupted (Terrain)
More than 25 years ago, Dr. Theo Colborn blazed the trail in endocrine disruption research, facing detractors at every turn. Today, at 86, she’s no longer marginalized as a “bunny hugger,” but hailed as a visionary.

Five Questions for Dr. Theo Colbon (The Orion Blog)
Current day Rachel Carson, Colborn talks about EDCs and her life in science.

Where the Wild Things Ought to Be (The Wellborn Ecology Fund)

Still Listening (WorldHum.com)

Cold Comfort (The Boston Globe)
Sometimes a movie, sometimes… winter camping. A very fresh take on date night.

Snow Days (AMC Outdoors)

The Race to the North Pole: Who Seized the Arctic Grail? (Time-Life)

The Great Survivor: Ernest Shackleton (Time-Life)

Cleantown: Boston’s Harbor Islands Go Green (Outside)

Book Review: Before They’re Gone, by Michael Lanza (Appalachia Journal)

The Greatest Adventures of All Time (Time-Life Books)

The Outside Story (Northern Woodlands Press)

Soul of the Sky: Exploring the Human Side of Weather (Mount Washington Press)