Sierra, the country’s leading environmental magazine, has a front-of-the-book section called Notes from Here and There that’s akin to the New Yorker’s Talk of the Town. It’s an ideal venue for spotlighting personal views on the environment, not...
When I heard from a writer friend that her sister and cooking partner, both former chefs on whitewater rivers trips, had opened a restaurant in southern Utah, I vowed to get there someday. In summer of 2021, after a raft trip on the Green River, my wife and I drove...
“Come over for lunch. You can help me get a few things done ’round the house. Ever since I hurt my shoulder, I haven’t been able to do any hoovering,” said Dervla Murphy, Ireland’s most intrepid travel writer, when I let her know I was coming to the southern Ireland...
Most editors don’t mind if you write a bit longer than assigned. I was asked to write 900 to 1,000 words about Old Crow Medicine Show for The Press Democrat, so it would have been fine, for example, to submit 1,100 words. Yet my interview with bandleader Ketch...
As I prepared to interview Fran Lebowitz, my friend and colleague Tim Cahill told me that she’d appeared on the cover of Outside magazine. This surprised me so I did a bit of digging and ended up writing this sidebar to accompany my story — click here for...
I may not have chosen a lucrative career but there’s no one better than Peter Coyote to help me see that there are far more valuable riches than money. Bottom line: I didn’t earn much for this story but got to spend nearly three hours with Peter at his...