I’m a freelance writer, journalist, and photographer and I live in New Orleans. For fifteen years, New Orleans has been my main subject. As a journalist, I reported on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, on Haiti after the 2010 earthquake, and the BP oil spill, for publications including The Christian Science Monitor and Salon.
Street life, performance culture, and the visual art scene in New Orleans are the focus of my magazine writing and photography. My work has appeared in Art + Design Magazine, The Oxford American, Raw Vision Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, Art Voices, 64 Parishes, and Art in America. I offer photography, writing, and editing services for academic projects, social media, marketing, blogging, live performances, and special events. My rates are reasonable and I’d love to talk to you!
I’m originally from North Carolina and have a master’s degree in Liberal Studies from Duke University and degrees in journalism and English from UNC-Chapel Hill. I’m a swing dancer and two-stepper and shoot photographs for WWOZ, the best community radio station in the world. I’m also a retired bicycle mechanic and could do the brake pads and rotors on your car, too.
Articles
A moment of inspiration after a life-changing accident led mill worker Clyde Jones to create his famous roadside menagerie.
Herbert Kearney rode deep currents creating a metaphysical autobiography with his visionary art.
Welmon Sharlhorne’s drawings became his lifeline in prison and were already hanging in galleries when he became a free man.
Decaying facades, storm wrecked houses, lush yet burdened landscapes, and young Huck Finn protagonists searching for hidden truths—all figure prominently in the work of painter James Taylor Bonds.
A city known for its creative spirit, New Orleans takes a roll-of-the-dice at the start of every hurricane season. Those six months are likely to pass with languid ease, yet could always end in catastrophe.
A gender-shifting black cat, a brick hurling white mouse, and a bulldog cop forever enforcing order on their anarchic love triangle seems a spare frame to hang perhaps the greatest American comic strip.
Willie Birch of the Seventh Ward says: “I believe that it’s the culture here that will do the most to bring us back.”
Rental prices in Port-au-Prince are estimated at 5 to 10 times higher than before the Haiti earthquake, pricing out local civic organizations in favor of wealthier international NGOs.
Two years after the deluge: A brew of Hollywood pyrotechnics, homeowner nightmares and local cultural revival in New Orleans.