Selected Journalism and other Writing
I have worked professionally as a writer across a variety of contexts, from busy newsrooms covering culture and local government beats to the hustle of freelance writing, nonprofit advocacy, travel writing sites, blogs, and literary journals. Some of my investigative journalism exposed government and corporate corruption. In some of these venues I have also served as editor, or editorial advisor. I have worked collaboratively with other writers, and have published in both print and digital venues. While some of this has been lost to the ethers of the web, compiled here are some of my favorite examples of journalism, op-eds, advocacy, interviews, and creative works.
Peaks controversy coverage
From 2005-2016, I wrote for a regional independent monthly arts and news publication called The Noise. I covered the (still-ongoing) controversy over development by the Arizona Snowbowl Ski Resort on the San Francisco Peaks, a mountain range in northern Arizona held sacred in different ways by at least 13 tribes. Those tribes vehemently opposed Snowbowl’s developments, specifically the use of municipal reclaimed wastewater to make snow. I covered multiple lawsuits, city council meetings, forest service “listening sessions,” and many forms of Indigenous-led direct actions, demonstrations, and more. While the resort was eventually able to proceed with their developments, new proposals for “improvements have been recently submitted under new ownership; the stories I wrote here provide much needed context for those trying to understand this issue as it continues to unfold today. It was my experiences covering this issue that eventually informed my book, Recreational Colonialism and the Rhetorical Landscapes of the Outdoors.Below find articles I wrote for The Noise and other venues, like High Country News, covering this issue.
2009_9_a thousand different mountains on the peaks
2009_10_no really whats in the wastewater
2010_9_flagstaff debates water for snowbowl
2010_10_flagstaff debates water for snowbowl part2
2010_12_our water systems our future_inconvenient truths revealed in snowbowl talks
2011_3_resistance continues for snowbowl opposition
2011_7_direct actions halt snowbowl construction
2011_8_anti-snowbowl direct actions intensify alongside construction
2011_11_building a movement_a history of resistance
2012_2_legal battle to protect the peaks reveals flaws in legal system
2012_4_Peaks owned and operated by snowbowl
2012_7_the rhetoric of exclusion on the peaks
2012_8_national support peaks for peaks attorney facing outrageous attacks
2012_9_tree sit halts construction of reclaimed wastewater pipeline
2013_1_forest service files absurd charges against protect the peaks activists
2013_2_showdown with ADEQ_citizens find snowbowl wastewater violations
2014_3_free speech and water conservation dog dew downtown
2015_2_borowsky says he’s selling snowbowl to ski franchise
2015_3_council votes against citizens request to reopen water policy
2014_8_My Town Wasted Scarce Water for a Celebration. High Country News.op-ed
Other Reporting from Northern Arizona and Elsewhere
As a reporter and editor in northern Arizona, I covered a wide array of issues beyond the controversy over development on the San Francisco Peaks either through my column, “Under the Concrete,” or through straight up news pieces. I covered a range of social and environmental justice issues, from the impact of Peabody Coal on the Navajo Nation to sexual violence prevention and education, state misappropriation of funding for education, and interviews with folks like Winona LaDuke, Ralph Nader, local political candidates, and some of northern Arizona’s most eccentric and wonderful people. Here are some selected news articles, essays, and interviews.
2006_10_grass is greener on m.a.r.s. (men against rape and sexism)
2007_7_car culture will never be sustainable
2007_11_in defense of wild water
2010_7_interview with katie lee part 2 (a shorter version of the full interview with Katie Lee was published in this issue of High Desert Journal)
2010_8_interview with katie lee part 3
2011_2_raising the bar_how some downtown flagstaff bar owners are combating sexual assault
2011_5_rebalancing the rhetoric of sustainability
2013_12_future of energy on the Colorado plateau forum heats up
2015_4_Gov Ducey’s Cuts to Education
2015_9_justice not gestures_ flagstaff moves to recognize Indigenous peoples day(shorted version printed as op-ed in High Country News)
2015_10_paatuwaqatsi running for water running for life (shorted version printed as op-ed in High Country News)
2009_3_Cartooning Resistance_an Interview with Stephanie McMillan (Z-Magazine)
Bicycle Advocacy
As an advocate for all things bicycle, it’s necessary to include a separate section highlighting some of the articles and essays I’ve written in support of bicycle infrastructure, policy, and celebration of the culture. Many of these articles are meant to be informative, while others are simply fun, by which I mean occasionally unhinged in a variety of delightful ways. I wrote these essays under the column “Loose Spoke.”
2008_11_alley cat races in flagstaff
2010_11_that is not why i ride a bike
2011_1_make your own studded bicycle tires
2011_8_riding through the collapse of civilization
2015_9_how to survive your newly discovered love of cycling in flagstaff part 1
2015_10_how to survive your newly discovered love of cycling in flagstaff part 2
2016_3_retracing moqui frontier fantasies and recreation in flagstaff
Creative Works
I have, on occasion, been inspired to compose creative works like poetry and creative nonfiction. Here are some selected works.
From the Vault
From 2000-2003, I wrote or contributed to nearly 100 articles and served on the editorial board for the Purdue Exponent, the student run daily newspaper from Purdue University. It was my first experience working in a busy newsroom, where I wrote 3-5 articles a week. I covered a lot of music shows, wrote album reviews, profiled artists, but most of what I covered was the every day news of the city–city council, construction projects, ordinances. My most memorable experience was interviewing Anna Akeley, then 98 years old, who survived the holocaust and went on to become a beloved physics instructor at Purdue. I remember trying to negociate a longer word count for that one, to no avail. While I recognize how important this experience was, looking back it’s honestly a bit awkward–I started when I was barely 20 years old–what I see in those articles is a journalist who hadn’t found their voice yet, writing about a small midwestern city two decades ago. Prior to that, in high school, I interned as a sports writer at the Vidette Times, in northwest Indiana. Here article from 1999 was the first public byline I ever had, and the first moment I called myself a journalist.