I’m a Seattle-based writer and editor for various outdoor and health publications, including Bicycling, Backpacker, Men’s Journal, Outside, Skiing, Ski, Snoworld, Powder, Health, Natural Solutions, Prevention, Women’s Health, High Country News, Delicious Living, Runner’s World, Islands, Diane, The Drake, Mountain, and Women’s Adventure. A graduate of Williams College (with a degree in art history, Phi Beta Kappa), I’ve been a senior articles editor at Backpacker, a managing editor at Skiing, and a staff writer for Health—and I’m regular writer, blogger, and editor for the travel website away.com. I’m the author of Colorado’s Classic Mountain Towns, a guidebook about places like Aspen, Telluride, and Crested Butte.
On the flip side, I’m a graduate of the MFA fiction program at Brooklyn College, where I was the editor-in-chief of The Brooklyn Review, the recipient of a creative writing scholarship, and an adjunct lecturer. I’m currently working on my first novel, which—while still very much in progress—has earned me a couple props: I’ve won fellowships at the MacDowell Colony and the Vermont Studio Center, and I’m heading to the Djerassi Resident Artists Program in October 2012. Last summer, I received the Ivan Klima Fellowship in Fiction from Western Michigan University’s Prague Summer Program, which allowed me to spend a month in the Czech Republic researching my book.
Born and raised in Seattle, I’ve done time in London, San Francisco, Boulder, and Brooklyn—though some years I’m on the road as much as I’m home. For the sake of work, I’ve traversed both California’s High Sierra and Slovakia’s High Tatra mountains on skis, backpacked in Australia’s Outback, driven 4,000 kilometers around South Africa, marched 26.2 miles in eight hours (carrying a 37-pound pack) through the New Mexico’s White Sands Missile Range, scuba-dived in the Red Sea, kayaked and skied first descents throughout Alaska’s Prince William Sound, rock-climbed in Joshua Tree National Park, ridden my bike up Pikes Peak, and covered Switzerland’s infamous Patrouille des Glaciers ski-mountaineering race. But I sit at a desk, too—and write service packages, essays, and short stories from the comfort of my apartment. With a partial view of Mount Rainier, of course.