I was born in Kansas, grew up in Kentucky, went to graduate school in New England, and now live in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley where I work as a freelance writer of articles and essays dealing with the natural world, history, and culture. As an attorney I've worked extensively with state and federal agencies as well as with various nonprofit groups on environmental issues dealing with habitat preservation and connectivity, endangered species, conservation easements, climate change effects on ecosystems, and .

I've been published in Ensia, Vice, Yale Environment360, Aeon, (Chesapeake) Bay Journal, Sierra, Mongabay, Discover, Humanities, The Revelator, Cosmos, Bird Watcher’s Digest, FuturePerfect, The Southern Quarterly, Grit, The Utne Reader, African Wildlife News, Earth Island Journal, Virginia Wildlife, Wildlife in North Carolina, History Today, Blue Ridge Digest, Virginia Sportsman, Africa Geographic, Virginia Business, Quest: The Science of Sustainability, and other pubs.

Documentary filmmaking is another passion of mine. I enjoyed a month with Maine Media Workshops in the summer of 2011 where I wrote, produced, shot, edited and scored a short film concerning the reintroduction of declining seabirds to the Gulf of Maine, an opportunity funded in part through a Madson Fellowship awarded by the Outdoor Writers Association of America. I also directed a crew of a dozen volunteers in making a film to benefit a local dog rescue group.

I hold both a Juris Doctorate and a Master’s Degree in Environmental Policy from Vermont Law & Graduate School, one of the country’s top environmental law facilities, and have developed a reputation for explicating complex legal, policy and scientific matters in illuminating and compelling prose.

My areas of journalistic expertise includes endangered species, habitat preservation and connection, wildlife crime, public lands management, climate change effects on wildlife, wetlands mitigation, conservation easements, traditional cultures, and rural living. I’m particularly interested in journalistic projects that involve some of the weightiest topics of our time: rewilding, the African poaching crisis, the Anthropocene and the Sixth Extinction. I’ve worked with numerous conservation NGOs and federal environmental agencies, and am a skilled and eager naturalist.

I've even picked up a few awards and recognitions along the way:

• 2023 Patagonia Tools for Grassroots Activists Institute, Lake Tahoe
• 2018 Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources Post-SEJ Conference Tour of Great Lakes
• 2018 Travel Fellowship for Society of Environmental Journalists Annual Conference
• 2018 St. Lawrence River Institute, Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources
• 2018 Excellence in Craft Awards, First and Second Place, Virginia Outdoor Writers Association
• 2017 Most Read Article on Mongabay, “Namibia’s Low Cost, Sustainable Solution to Seabird Bycatch”
• 2017 Speaker’s Fellowship for the World Conference of Science Journalism, Council for the
• Advancement of Science Writing, San Francisco
• 2017 Journalism Fellow, Society of Wetland Scientists
• 2017 Freelance Fellowship for Workshop: “Searching for Truth in the Age of Alternative Facts,”
• Society of Environmental Journalists
• 2017 Certificate of Excellence in Craft for Conservation Writing, Virginia Outdoor Writers
• Association and Appalachian Mountain Advocates
• 2015 McCormick Specialized Reporting Institute: “Covering Water in a Changing World”
• 2015 Freelance Fellowship for ScienceWriters2015, National Association of Science Writers
• 2015 Chesapeake Bay Institute, Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources
• 2015 Frank Allen Field Reporting Award, Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources
• 2014 Rosen Fellowship, Society of Environmental Journalists

I try to spend a maximum amount of my time outdoors - hiking, canoeing, birding, camping, fishing - though in point of fact most of my days are spent in the salt mines of freelancing: pitching, researching and writing. I enjoy literature, film, history, music, photography and dogs. Especially rescued pitbulls.