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Q&A with with Peter Hessler (Longreads)
From Longreads: In the fall of 2011, Peter Hessler arrived in Egypt, with his family — twin toddlers, and his wife, the writer Leslie Chang. The two had met in China, where Hessler first landed as a...
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The Science of Stories
There’s a new collection out called The Science of Story: The Brain Behind Creative Nonfiction, and I was very happy to have one of my essays, The Secret Lives of Stories: Rewriting Our Personal...
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The Geography of Madness and the Best Travel Books of the Decade
I was thrilled to see the The Geography of Madness included on this list of the best travel books of the last decade, alongside books by Geoff Dyer, Katherine Boo and Andrew McCarthy, all of whom I...
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The Nation of Poets (Belt Magazine)
New story at Belt Magazine: Photo by Darin Kamnetz One night not long ago, I sat in a church basement in Cedar Riverside, a Minneapolis neighborhood where many of Minnesota’s fifty thousand Somali...
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A River of Darkness: Q&A with Peter Heller
From the Star Tribune: In 1989, Peter Heller was a few years out of college, trying to make a living. He delivered pizzas, worked construction, taught kayaking. In his free time, he wrote short...
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Hope in Small Things: An Interview with the late Binyavanga Wainaina
Author’s note: In 2005, I interviewed a young Kenyan writer named Binyavanga Wainaina. In the following years, he would go on to become an international celebrity, author and provocateur. Wainaina was...
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Deviating with Rolf Potts
In 2003, my wife and I were living in Bangkok, Thailand. One day I went across town to meet a fellow travel writer named Rolf Potts. He had a new book out called Vagabonding, which was what he branded...
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Free Your Mind: On Creativity (Rotary)
From Rotary Magazine: Spencer Silver just across town from where I sit typing this in Minneapolis. The 80-year-old chemist died recently. Silver’s name may not be familiar to you, but his work has...
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The Shape of Time (Poets & Writers)
In the May/June 2022 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, I have an essay about my time at the Anderson Center in Red Wing Minnesota, and the writers I met there who are no longer with us. It’s also...
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The Shape of the World: Essays (New Book)
In 2009, I was traveling across West Africa when I stopped in a hostel in Bamako, the capital of Mali. Inside the compound a trunk was parked. On its hood there was painted a giant wheel and the words...
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