photo by Shelby Brakken
Raised in Alabama, I've lived in the Pacific Northwest for the last 20 years.
I write about how humans are profoundly altering the environment – from climate change to biodiversity loss – and undertaking extraordinary endeavors to preserve nature.
My work has appeared in Nature, Popular Science, Scientific American, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, bioGraphic, Discover, Science, Washington Post, Civil Eats, Ensia, Yale e360, Modern Farmer, Portland Monthly and many others.
My stories tend to focus on agriculture, food security, and land use. In 2016, I was awarded an Alicia Patterson journalism fellowship to spend the year reporting on seed sovereignty, gene banks, and crop diversity. In 2021, my bioGraphic story “Raising Nature on Florida Ranches” was awarded the Northwest Science Writers Association’s Best of the Northwest Science Writing award.
I’ve also received reporting grants from the Society of Environmental Journalists, The Food and Environment Reporting Network (FERN), European Geosciences Union, and the Institute for Journalism & Natural Resources. My reporting has taken me to Malaysia, Iceland, Peru, Scotland, and all over the United States.
A common thread through my writing is the importance of diversity – to the foods we eat, the lands we manage, and even among scientists conducting research.