I’m a staff writer for the New York Times Magazine.
I’ve written portraits of writers (Haruki Murakami, Anne Carson, John McPhee) and athletes (Russell Westbrook, Bill Walton, Phil Jackson) and odd places all over the world, including Mount Rushmore and a Charles Dickens theme park and the NBA Bubble at DisneyWorld. My work has won a National Magazine Award and the National Book Critics Circle's Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing and has been included in several “BestAmericanWriting” anthologies.
I’ve written miscellaneous essays about all kinds of things: waterparks, marginalia, Derek Jeter, Fleetwood Mac, animal videos, the pleasure of looking out the window, and watching “Jeopardy!” with my father. You can find my whole NYT archive here.
My wife, Sarah, came up with the idea for the long-running magazine column Letter of Recommendation — may the trumpets of acknowledgement blare in her honor forever.
Some Stories
Profile: Kevin Durant
Ok, why not, let’s start with the asteroid.
Feature: David’s Ankles
Perfection, it turns out, is no way to try to live. It is a child’s idea, a cartoon — this desire not to be merely good, not to do merely well, but to be faultless.
Feature: Northern White Rhinos
The girls do not exist for us. They are not symbols or oracles. They are not there to answer our existential questions or to help us save the world. They are something better and simpler. They are the girls.
Feature: Walnut and Me
And so, every morning, as I drink my coffee, I run my fingers through Walnut’s luscious fur and think about the fact that he will die.
Profile: Dwayne Johnson
“A day without pain is like a day without sunshine.”