I moved to New York City 21 years ago, sure that nothing could be worse than a continued existence in Hartwell, Georgia, where I grew up. I studied fashion at F.I.T. and journalism at NYU. I interned at four national magazines and wrote about everything from Jerry Garcia’s toilet to the Ritz Paris hotel. I didn’t even have a passport when I landed my first full-time magazine job at Travel + Leisure.

I continued my career in Dallas as an editor at the inflight magazine for Southwest Airlines; then Charlotte, where I switched to freelancing. I live in Athens, Georgia, now, and write about people and places close to home, from Bell’s Food Store to a VFW in Warner Robins, Georgia.

In 2019 I started the Narrative Nonfiction MFA program at the University of Georgia. What stories could I write, I wondered, if I spent months or years writing instead of days. Since then I’ve written about deer hunting with a 6-year-old boy and his father; the friendships between professional wrestlers that come to light around the dinner table; and a hydroponic vegetable farm surrounded by 25,000 acres of peanuts, corn, and cotton. I’ve spent the past four years immersive reporting on independent professional wrestlers around Georgia and am writing a book, Make or Break: Truth, Artifice and the Chase for Glory in America. It’s a book about the universal truths that abound in America’s “fakest” sport, set in the small-town pro wrestling rings of Georgia.