I'm interested in the power of storytelling, both old-fashioned and new, to explore important issues and ideas, and to bring people together. Public interest + public life.

 

My writing appears in the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, the Atlantic Monthly, and elsewhere. I make some radio, too, mostly for This American Life. My work has won a few national journalism awards, and been profiled in the "Year in Ideas" issue of the New York Times Magazine.

 

I'm the co-creator and editor-in-chief of Pop-Up Magazine, a new "live magazine" that presents documentary filmmakers, photographers, writers, public radio producers, and artists, live on stage, at San Francisco's 2700-seat Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall. Between shows, we've collaborated on  mixed-media journalism performances with ESPN and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

 

I'm a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank led by the New Yorker staff writer Steve Coll.

 

I've been an on-stage interviewer for City Arts & Lectures. My next appearance will be with the author Sarah Vowell.

 

And I'm an advisor to The Atavist, a new digital publisher of short nonfiction books for cell phones and tablets.

 

Previously, I was a features editor at Foreign Policy, where I worked on the journal's relaunch as a glossy, wider circulation magazine.

 

I graduated from Brown University, and live in San Francisco.