I’m a storyteller, writing stories about art, architecture, literature, and music.

I love telling stories about the arts, because art, literature, music and architecture can lift us out of our workaday muddling of laundry and dirty dishes and overflowing recycling bins and fill us with wonder, sorrow, amazement, and joy. Even more remarkable to my mind is that the people who create the experiences aren’t some sort of higher form of the species–artists aren’t separate from the rest of us. They are us, human, with all the foibles and follies that implies. (And oh how much fun those foibles are to recount!)

What makes artists different is their belief in possibilities. A painter believes he or she can take a blank canvas and some oily pigments and invent a new vision. Writers believe they can put one word in front of the other and create a whole new world. Composers believe they can arrange sounds according to some sort of plan and transport your soul. To believe these things takes supreme self-confidence and an act of powerful will. If nothing else inspires you about art, let that inspire you: the belief that anything is possible.

Get on with it: what do I actually do?

I write articles about art, architecture, music, and literature for publications such as mental_floss. I’ve also written two books, Secret Lives of Great Artists and Secret Lives of Great Composers, which have been reviewed in newspapers from Ohio to Oregon and featured on radio stations in Dallas/Fort Worth, Austin, and Tulsa and nationally on PRI’s Here and Now.

In addition, I have more than ten years of experience writing about the architecture and urban design industry, with articles appearing in publications such as Architectural Record, Urban Land, and Planning.

I’ve also written about a wide range of other topics from archaeology to wastewater management, and once you’ve written about wastewater management, you can write about anything.

Freelance Writing

Reporting, writing and editing articles for consumer magazines, trade publications and business journals. For more information, check out my Clips page. Some highlights:

  • The strange tale of Houston’s Carousel House, a lost Modern icon, for Architectural Record.
  • Five of history’s ugliest artistic rivalries, from Handel’s duel to Gabriel Garcia Marquez getting punched in the face, for mental_floss.
  • The unprecedented rise of economic prosperity on Native American reservations, for Planning.
  • An examination of Catholic Charities of Tarrant County’s contributions to the community, for The Fort Worth Business Press.
  • Six years worth of whitepapers detailing trends and issues facing higher education, for APPA, the association of higher-education facilities professionals.

Teaching

Texas Christian University — Adjunct Faculty, Writing for Public Relations
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill — Teaching Fellow, Rhetoric and Composition

Education

Masters in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, December 2002.

Bachelors in English and Journalism with Honors, Texas Christian University, May 1993.

Organizations

American Society of Journalists and Authors