Shows
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 84: John Woodrow CoxJohn Woodrow Cox is an enterprise reporter for the Washington Post. He’s currently writing stories focused on how the COVID pandemic is impacting children.
On October 7, the Post published his latest story, about the Marquez-Greene family in Connecticut. They lost their daughter Ana at Sandy Hook, and recently had to make a hard decision as to whether they would send their 16-year-old son Isaiah back to school in the middle of the pandemic.
Cox was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing in 2018 for his series of stories that look at gun violence and how it was im...2020-10-1945 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 83: Alex BelthAlex Belth is the curator of The Stacks Reader and the editor of Esquire Classic. He’s also the creator of Bronx Banter, a website that focuses on New York City sports, arts and culture and more.
The Stacks Reader is a treasure trove of classic magazine journalism and other writing that otherwise might be lost to history. Belth has built this archive largely by himself, reaching out to writers and their families and obtaining the rights to republish.
There are stories in The Stacks Reader that go all the way back to 1932, like Westbrook Pegler’s Chicago Tribune story head...2020-07-0349 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 82: Chris JonesBack in November, podcast host Matt Tullis talked with Chris Jones. Tullis wanted to talk with him about writing for a book he’s working on, a book focused on how to report and write narrative journalism.
Tullis talked with Jones about writing for about 30 minutes. They talked about how Jones wrote “The Things That Carried Him,” which Jones won a National Magazine Award for in 2009. They talked about his Zanesville zoo story and his Roger Ebert profile and his Kenneth Feinberg profile.
They also talked about Jones making the move to screenwriting.
Jones made quite a career for himself at Esq...2020-04-2033 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 81: Kim CrossKim Cross is a freelancer who writes for a number of publications. Most recently, Bicycling Magazine published her story “Noel and Leon: What Happens When Two Strangers Trust the Rides of Their Lives to the Magic of the Universe.”
The story is about two bicyclists who were riding in opposite directions on thousand-mile journeys. They just so happened to cross paths in the middle of a desert. Cross first heard about these two men five years ago, and fought long and hard to find a home for the story.
This is the second time Cross has been on the podcast. She...2020-04-1345 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 80: Eva HollandEva Holland is the author of the book “Nerve: Adventures in the Science of Fear.”
Nerve is a hybrid of memoir and reported science. It’s focused on Holland encountering and overcoming the things she was most fearful of, and the science behind it all.
The book came about after a few things happened back in 2015. First, Holland’s mom died unexpectedly. That was one of Holland’s greatest fears in life. And then, she was in a series of serious car crashes.
“I rolled my car into a ditch in April 2016, and I had been thinking about the idea of a book ab...2020-04-0640 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 79: Finding Stories To TellHow do some of the best narrative journalists find the stories they report and write about? This episode focuses on how four different reporters landed on stories that are still read and talked about today.
In the first part, Luke Dittrich talks about how he ultimately decided to head to Joplin, Missouri, to report and write a story that won him a National Magazine Award.
In Part II, Eli Saslow talks about how he landed himself in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, for the first piece in his Pulitzer Prize winning series on food stamps.
In Part III, Pamela Colloff discusses the...2020-03-0628 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 78: Bronwen DickeyBronwen Dickey is a contributing editor at The Oxford American and the author of Pit Bull: The Battle Over an American Icon.
In October 2019, her story “The Remains” was published by Esquire. The story looks at forensic anthropology, and one case in particular.
“The story is about a young man named Christian Gonzalez, who came to this country when he was very, very young with his family, and grew up in East Texas and considered himself, as did his friends and family, to be American,” Dickey says. “And then he was deported after kind of a weird conflagration of events, and he was...2020-01-0843 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 77: New Stories We TellThis episode features clips from four of the women included in the new anthology, “New Stories We Tell: True Tales by America’s New Generation of Great Women Journalists.” The book was recently published by The Sager Group.
"New Stories We Tell" is the third in a series of anthologies celebrating women in longform journalism, featuring more than 50 great writers from the 1950s to the present. The first was “Newswomen: Twenty-Five Years of Front Page Journalism,” and was published in 2016. That book was followed two years later by “The Stories We Tell: Classic True Tales By America’s Greatest Women Journalists.”
...2019-11-1448 min
Gangrey PodcastKelley Benham French (2013)This episode is a rebroadcast of the interview Matt Tullis did with Kelley Benham French in February 2013. They talked about her three-part series “Never Let Go,” which focused on the birth of her and Tom French’s daughter. Juniper was born at 23 weeks and 6 days, weighing just one pound-four ounces.
The series was a hit. It was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2013. And it was expanded into a book, which French wrote with Tom. That book is titled “Juniper: The Girl Who Was Born Too Soon.”
Kelley Benham French is currently a professor of practice at the University of Indiana...2019-09-1730 min
Gangrey PodcastJustin Heckert (2013)This is a rebroadcast of the original episode of Gangrey: The Podcast, featuring Justin Heckert. It originally aired in January 2013. Heckert talked with host Matt Tullis about his story “The Hazards of Growing Up Painlessly,” which ran in The New York Times Magazine in November 2012. The story is about a 13-year-old girl who has a medical condition that makes it so she can’t feel pain.
Since joining the podcast, Heckert has reported and written a lot of other amazing stories. His story, “Susan Cox is No Longer Here,” ran in Indianapolis Monthly, and was later republished by River Teeth: A Journal...2019-09-1027 min
Gangrey PodcastKim Cross (2015)This episode is a rebroadcast of the interview Matt Tullis did with Kim Cross in September 2015. Cross’s book “What Stands in the Storm: Three Days in the Worst Superstorm to Hit the South’s Tornado Alley” had been published by Atria Books in March of that year. The book is a reporting and writing masterpiece, as Cross went to great lengths to make sure the reporting was accurate, and the writing was compelling.
Since joining the podcast, Cross been included in Best American Sports Writing twice. She was included in the 2016 edition for her story The King of Tides, which ra...2019-09-0334 min
Gangrey PodcastEli Saslow (2014)This episode is a rebroadcast of the interview Matt Tullis did with Eli Saslow back in September 2014. Saslow, a reporter for the Washington Post, had just won the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for his six-part series on food stamps in a post-recession America. Tullis and Saslow talked about that series and much more.
Since joining the podcast, Saslow has continued to write compelling stories that show the big issues facing our country in minute detail. He’s written about the opioid epidemic, how the made-up stories get passed around the Internet as news, immigration, and more. In June 2018, he wr...2019-08-2741 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 76: Rachel MonroeOn this episode, Rachel Monroe talks with host Matt Tullis. Monroe’s first book, Savage Appetites: Four True Stories of Women, Crime and Obsession, was published by Scribner. It went on sale today, August 19.
The book tells the stories of four true crimes that had women intimately involved in them, but all in different capacities.
Monroe is a freelance writer based in Marfa, Texas. She also serves as a volunteer firefighter there. She’s written about crime, communes, utopias, drones, small town, firefighters, haunted houses, really just about everything.
She was a finalist for a Livingston Award for Young Journalists in 201...2019-08-2039 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 75: Latria GrahamOn this episode, host Matt Tullis talked with Latria Graham, a writer, editor and cultural critic currently living in South Carolina.
Graham’s writing revolves around the dynamics of race, gender norms, class, nerd culture, and sports. Back in 2016, she wrote one of the last pieces for SB Nation Longform. That piece was headlined “The Dark Knight Unmasked,” and was about the Carolina Panther’s Josh Norman.
Graham has also written some important pieces about race for The Establishment, which is no longer publishing. Fortunately, they’ve kept their stories online. One of those pieces was an essay written by Graham tit...2019-06-2743 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 74: Amos BarshadOn this episode, I talk with Amos Barshad, the author of the book, “No One Man Should Have All That Power: How Rasputins Manipulate the World.” It was published by Abrams Press in April.
The book looks at the people in the shadows of the powerful who silently pull strings and wield their own power. It’s incredibly interesting and entertaining, covering Rasputins in everything from pop culture to crime, from professional sports to politics. It also covers the namesake Rasputin – Grigori Raputin, an almost mythical Russian mystic who had the ear and the trust of Prince Yusupof, until Rasputin was murd...2019-06-0434 min
Gangrey PodcastWil S Hylton (2014)This episode is a rebroadcast of the interview Matt Tullis did Wil S. Hylton in March of 2014. At the time, the two talked about Hylton’s new book, Vanished: The Sixty-Year Search for the Missing Men of World War II.
The book focuses for the modern-day search for one American bomber that crashed over the Pacific Islands during the war. That bomber carried 11 men, who for decades, were listed as missing in action.
When Hylton started the piece, he thought it was going to be a magazine piece. He had no idea it would expand into his first book.
“I neve...2019-05-3153 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 73: Philip GerardOn this episode, host Matt Tullis talks with Philip Gerard.
Gerard, who is a professor in the Creative Writing Department at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, is the author of a new book about the Civil War. The Last Battleground: The Civil War Comes to North Carolina was published in March by the University of North Carolina Press. The book is an extension of a series of nonfiction narratives that Gerard was writing for Our State magazine. Gerard was one of Tullis’s professors when he was in the MFA program at UNCW.
Gerard is also the author of Ca...2019-05-1750 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 72: The Other SideThis episode focuses on Eli Saslow's story "Into the Lonely Quiet," which was about one Newtown family whose son was killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
But instead of focusing on the reporting aspect of the story, as Gangrey episodes typically do, this episode is focused on the story's subjects and what it was like to open their lives up during a traumatic and horrific time in their lives.
This is also the first episode of Gangrey: The Podcast that is told in story form, and not through straight interview. It's a complimentary audio piece tied to a...2019-04-1618 min
Gangrey PodcastWright Thompson (2013)On this episode, I’m going to replay an interview I did Wright Thompson back in October of 2013.
Thompson’s first book was just released by Penguin Books this week. It’s titled "The Cost of These Dreams: Sports Stories and Other Serious Business." It consists of 14 of Thompson’s previously published stories for ESPN. That includes the two stories that I talked with Wright about on this episode of the show – "Michael Jordan Has Not Left the Building," and "The Losses of Dan Gable."
Thompson’s profile on legendary wrestling coach Dan Gable is a perfect example of how and why rese...2019-04-1245 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 71: Carson VaughanOn this episode, host Matt Tullis talks with Carson Vaughan, the author of the “Zoo Nebraska: The Dismantling of an American Dream,” which focuses on a small-town zoo in Royal, Nebraska, and its eventual downfall.
Vaughan started reporting and writing this book as an undergraduate student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He then took the project to graduate school, where it was his master’s thesis in the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s MFA creative writing program. That’s the same program that Tullis graduated from in 2005.
“Zoo Nebraska” was published by Little A, an imprint of Amazon Publishing that focuses o...2019-03-2040 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 70: Michael GraffOn this episode, host Matt Tullis talks with Michael Graff. Graff was the guest on Episode 35, back in June of 2015. At the time, he was the editor of Charlotte Magazine. He was also writing for places like SB Nation Longform.
Now Graff is a freelance writer and editor. He recently published his first piece with ESPN.com, a story that focused on the life of former NBA legend Muggsy Bogues. That story, How Muggsy Bogues saved his brother’s life, and found the meaning of his own, explores the lives of two brothers, Muggsy, the superstar, and Chuckie, the older br...2019-02-2050 min
Gangrey PodcastMichael Brick Tribute (2016)On this episode, we’re rebroadcasting an interview Matt Tullis did with Ben Montgomery, Thomas Lake, Michael Kruse, Wright Thompson, and Tony Rehagen, about the late, great Michael Brick.
Brick died on February 8, 2016 after battling colon cancer. We’re approaching the third anniversary of Brick’s death, but his name and his amazing work lives on because a book of his stories — “Everyone Leaves Behind a Name” — was put together by the guests on this show and others, and then published by The Sager Group.
The stories included in “Everyone Leaves Behind a Name” were originally published in The New York Times, the Ho...2019-02-0652 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 69: Sarah WeinmanOn this episode, Matt Tullis talked with Sarah Weinman, the author of “The Real Lolita: The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel that Scandalized the World,” which was published by Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers in September.
The book is a gripping true-crime investigation into the 1948 abduction of Sally Horner and how it inspired Vladimir Nabokov’s classic novel, “Lolita.”
Weinman regularly writes pieces of true crime longform, having been published by the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Republic, the Guardian, and Buzzfeed, among others. She also covers book publishing for Publishers Marketplace.
Weinman is the editor...2018-12-1042 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 68: Brendan O'MearaOn this episode, Matt Tullis talks with Brendan O’Meara. O’Meara is the host of the Creative Nonfiction Podcast. On that show, he talks to writers, filmmakers, producers, and podcasters who he admires. They talk about the art and craft of telling true stories, unpacking their origin stories as well as tips and habits so that listeners can apply those tools in their own work.
Tullis was a guest on the Creative Nonfiction Podcast back in September of 2017, when O’Meara talked with him about his memoir, Running With Ghosts. Recently, O’Meara hosted Glenn Stout, who talked about his new...2018-11-2647 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 67: Ben MontgomeryBen Montgomery is the author of “The Man Who Walked Backward: An American Dreamer’s Search For Meaning in the Great Depression.” The book was published by Little, Brown Spark in September, and tells the story of a man named Plennie Wingo, who in 1931, attempted to walk around the world, backward.
This is the third time Montgomery has been on the podcast. He was the guest on Episode 21, when he talked about his first book, “Grandma Gatewood’s Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail.” That book went on to become a New York Times Bestseller.
...2018-11-1243 min
Gangrey PodcastJanet Reitman (2013)On this episode, we’re rebroadcasting an interview that Matt Tullis did with Janet Reitman in October 2013. During this episode, Tullis and Reitman talked about her story, “Jahar’s World,” which ran in the Rolling Stone. The story was about Jahar Tsarnaev, one of the Boston Marathon bombers.
Rolling Stone was criticized at the time because they put a glossy photo of Tsarnaev on the cover. But journalistically, the story that Reitman wrote was lauded as an excellent piece of reporting and writing.
Reitman is being lauded again because of a piece she reported and wrote for the New York Times Ma...2018-11-0942 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 66: Brin-Jonathan ButlerOn this episode, host Matt Tullis talks with Brin-Jonathan Butler. Butler wrote the book, The Grandmaster: Magnus Carlsen and the Match that Made Chess Great Again, which will be released on November 6. The book takes a look at the 2016 World Chess Championship, which was held in New York City just before the 2016 election. It also dives deep into the type of personality needed to be a chess champion.
Butler’s first book, The Domino Diaries: My Decade Boxing With Olympic Champions and Chasing Hemingway’s Ghost in the Last Days of Castro’s Cuba, was shortlisted for the PEN/ESPN Award...2018-10-2957 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 3: Pamela ColloffEpisode 3 features Pamela Colloff of Texas Monthly. Late last year, her two-part series, “The Innocent Man” was published. The story focuses on Michael Morton, who in 1987, was wrongfully convicted of murdering his wife. In the podcast, Colloff talks about how she found out about the story, how she reported it and what it was like to shine light on a case like this.
Colloff has written a lot of stories for Texas Monthly since joining the podcast. Most recently, and movingly, though, was a piece titled “The Reckoning,” which was about one of the victims of what is regarded as the firs...2018-10-0128 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 2: Michael J. MooneyIn June 2012, D Magazine published Michael Mooney’s “The Most Amazing Bowling Story Ever.” The story is about a recreational bowler named Bill Fong, who on one night two years earlier, made an improbable run at perfection. The story has been included on just about every list of the best nonfiction of 2012 and ultimately was selected for Best American Sports Writing.
In this podcast, we talk with Mooney about how he found the story, what the reporting process was like and how he decided to structure it.
Since joining the podcast, Mooney has written dozens of amazing stories, including an up-clo...2018-10-0125 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 65: Jeff PearlmanOn this episode, host Matt Tullis talks with Jeff Pearlman. Pearlman is the author of “Football For A Buck: The Crazy Rise and Crazier Demise of the USFL.” The book takes a deep dive into the United States Football League, which existed from 1983 to 1985. The league existed when Pearlman was a kid, and he was in love with it. It’s a book that Pearlman has called a labor of love.
Pearlman interviewed 430 people for this book. Only two people with ties to the USFL that he reached out to refused to talk to him. One of those people was Donald...2018-09-1838 min
Gangrey PodcastEarl Swift (2014)On this episode, we’re rebroadcasting an interview Matt Tullis did with Earl Swift in November 2014. At the time, Swift’s book “Auto Biography: A Classic Car, An Outlaw Motorhead, and 57 Years of the American Dream” had just been published.
Swift has a new book out now. “Chesapeake Requiem: A Year With the Watermen of Vanishing Tangier Island” was published by Harper Collins, and is getting rave reviews.
Auto Biography is also a fantastic book. It tells the life story of a 1957 Chevy that, at the beginning of the book, is falling apart. He also delves deep into the life of the curre...2018-08-2040 min
Gangrey PodcastLuke Dittrich (2013)This episode is a rebroadcast of the interview Matt Tullis did with Luke Dittrich in September 2013. At the time, Esquire had just published his story “The Prophet,” a story about a neurosurgeon who claimed to have visited heaven in a best-selling book. Dittrich’s piece pretty much debunked those claims.
Dittrich also talks about his story about the Joplin, Missouri, tornado. The story — “Heavenly Father! I Love You! I Love Everyone,” was about 23 people who rode out the storm in a convenience store cooler. The store was destroyed, but the people within all survived. Dittrich ultimately won a National Magazine Award for th...2018-08-0250 min
Gangrey PodcastJohn Woodrow Cox (2013)On this episode, the podcast replays the interview Matt Tullis did with John Woodrow Cox from October 2013. Cox was the 12th guest on the podcast, and, at the time, was a general assignment reporter in Pinellas County for the Tampa Bay Times. On this episode, he talked about the short, narrative stories he was writing for the Floridian Magazine. The series was called “Dispatches from next door.” They were short pieces – just 500 words – but painstakingly reported. He talked about two such pieces – one about a woman who is only able to find peace out on the ocean, and another about a senior c...2018-07-1738 min
Gangrey PodcastBrooke Jarvis (2015)This episode features an interview Matt Tullis did with Brooke Jarvis in May 2015. In the interview, Jarvis talks about her story “The Deepest Dig,” which was included in the Best American Science and Nature Writing 2015 anthology. That story ran in the California Sunday Magazine. She also talked about her piece “Homeward,” which also ran in the California Sunday Magazine. That story is about a young man from the jungles of Ecuador, whose village sent him to the United States so he could be educated and come back to save the village from the oil industry and colonization.
Since joining the podcast...2018-07-0931 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 64: Stephen RodrickOn this episode, host Matt Tullis talks with Stephen Rodrick, a contributing editor for Rolling Stone and a writer-at-large for Esquire. In the third week of June, both of those magazines published profiles of two very different celebrities that Rodrick wrote.
Esquire published Rodrick’s piece on Taylor Sheridan, a writer and actor who is reinventing American Western storytelling through movies like “Sicario” and “Hell or High Water,” on June 19.
Two days later, Rolling Stone published his fascinating profile of Johnny Depp. That piece got all of the attention because Rodrick spent a sometimes sad, sometimes fun, sometimes weird 72 hours with the m...2018-07-0338 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode: 63 Pamela ColloffPamela Colloff is a senior reporter at ProPublica and a writer-at-large at The New York Times Magazine. She was the third guest on the podcast back in January 2013, when she talked about her Texas Monthly series The Innocent Man. That episode has unfortunately been lost. Colloff ultimately won the National Magazine Award in Feature Writing for that story.
On this show, Colloff talks about her two-part series, “Blood Will Tell,” her first project for ProPublica and the New York Times Magazine. In this extraordinary project, Colloff tells the story of Joe Bryan, a former principal in Texas and a man many...2018-06-2743 min
Gangrey PodcastDavid Giffels (2015)On this episode, we are replaying an interview Matt Tullis did with David Giffels in January 2015. Giffels is a former reporter and columnist for the Akron Beacon Journal in Ohio who has gone on to become a creative writing professor in the Northeast Ohio MFA program. He’s also the author of three books.
When he was on the show in 2015, his book, “The Hard Way on Purpose: Essays and Dispatches from the Rust Belt,” had just been published by Scribner. The book ruminates on Akron — Giffels’ hometown — specifically the city’s despair and destruction as the rubber industry moved out. It also e...2018-06-2243 min
Gangrey PodcastBaxter Holmes (2014)This episode features an interview with Baxter Holmes from 2014. At the time, Holmes had just joined ESPN, having previously written for the Boston Globe, where he covered the Boston Celtics.
When we talked with him four years ago, he had been hired to cover the Lakers. Since then, he’s had some incredible success, and has been promoted to a job that has him writing about the entire NBA.
One of the stories that came about in that new beat was a story on how professional basketball players are obsessed with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. The story – The NBA’s Secr...2018-06-1535 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 62: Leah SottileLeah Sottile is a freelance writer who, most recently, authored and hosted Bundyville, a four-part story series and seven-episode podcast, which was presented by Longreads and Oregon Public Broadcasting.
The project is the deepest dive yet into the Bundy family -- that’s the family that fought back against federal law enforcement officers out west not once, but twice, a few years ago -- and how they have become a symbol for those who feel the government is keeping them from living their true lives.
Sottile's features, profiles and investigative work has been featured frequently by the Washington Post, Playboy, Ca...2018-05-2939 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 61: Brantley HargroveBrantley Hargrove is the author of “The Man Who Caught The Storm: The Life of Legendary Tornado Chaser Tim Samaras,” which was published by Simon and Schuster in April. The book is about a legendary storm chaser who, despite never going to college, was a hugely successful engineer who also managed to record the first meteorological data from inside a massive tornado.
The book has gotten rave reviews. Hampton Sides, the author of “In the Kingdom of Ice,” said that “The Man Who Caught the Storm” is “a thrilling tale of Promethean defiance.” The Washington Post said that Hargrove is “one of today’s bes...2018-04-2741 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 60: Terrence McCoyTerrence McCoy covers poverty, inequality and social justice in urban and rural America for the Washington Post.
In February, he wrote the story “I don’t know how you got this way.” That piece is about how a young neo-Nazi has revealed himself to his family, and how his mother and grandmother are left wondering if they will ever get him back.
He served in the United States Peace Corps in Cambodia, an experience that ultimately led to The Playground, a Kindle single available on Amazon. That book was named by the Washington Post as one of the best nonfiction books...2018-04-0346 min
Gangrey PodcastGangrey Extra: Matt Tullis on Running With GhostsThis is a special, mini-episode of the podcast, and one that host Matt Tullis admits is greatly self-promotional.
He has made a trailer for his book, "Running With Ghosts." Some authors have been making or have had made book trailers for several years now, and he thought it would be fun to try and do one himself.
The video — which has been embedded on gangreythepodcast.com — consists of a reading of the prologue from the book, as well as photos that are tied to the days when Tullis had leukemia. There are also photos of the cancer patients he writes abou...2018-03-2905 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 59: Don Van Natta Jr.Don Van Natta is a senior writer for ESPN Digital and Print media. He was recently named a finalist — along with his reporting and writing partner Seth Wickersham — for a National Magazine Award in reporting for three stories: “Sin City or Bust,” “Standing Down,” and “Roger Goodell has a Jerry Jones problem.”
Van Natta has had quite the illustrious career. He’s been on three Pulitzer Prize winning reporting teams — two at the New York Times and one at the Miami Herald.
He joined ESPN in 2012, and has since produced many features and investigative pieces centered around the NFL. His profile of Dallas Co...2018-03-0145 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 58: Leonora LaPeter AntonLeonora LaPeter Anton is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter on the Tampa Bay Times’ enterprise team. In January, the Times published her story, “Gang raped at 17. Therapy at 65.”
The story follows the attempt of Evelyn Robinson to cope with a horrific rape, 48 years after it happened.
LaPeter Anton has been at the Tampa Bay Times since 2000. Her stories veer toward the unusual – a surrogate mother who can’t get pregnant; a broke couple who rent rooms in their mansion. She won a Pulitzer for her work in an investigation into the failing mental hospitals in the state of Florida.
She also contribute...2018-02-1941 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 57: Christopher GoffardOn this episode of Gangrey: The Podcast, host and producer Matt Tullis talks with Christopher Goffard about “Dirty John,” a combination print series and podcast. Goffard is an author and staff writer for the Los Angeles Times. “Dirty John” focuses on the relationship between Deborah Newell and John Meehan. It was a relationship Deborah’s children hated, and one that ended in the death of one person.
Goffard shared in the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for the LA Times’ investigation into the city of Bell, California. He has twice been a Pulitzer finalist for feature writing, in 2007 and 2014. His book, “You Will See Fire: A Se...2018-01-2346 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 56: Michael KruseMichael Kruse has been a senior staff writer at Politico for nearly four years. In that time, he has gone from writing deep profiles of presidential candidates to criss-crossing the country in an effort to understand the current state of politics in America.
One of Kruse’s most recent stories focused on Johnstown, Penn., a city and region that voted heavily for President Donald Trump. This story follows up on several people Kruse interviewed when he was in Johnstown just after the election.
Kruse also recently profiled Sen. Cory Booker, D-New Jersey in a piece headlined “Cory Booker Loves Donald Trum...2017-11-2751 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 55: Vanessa GrigoriadisThis week’s guest is Vanessa Grigoriadis, whose first book, “Blurred Lines: Rethinking Sex, Power and Consent on Campus,” was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in early September. The book reveals a new sexual revolution taking place across the country, one in which college students are on the front lines.
Her reporting shows women who are using savvy methods to fight entrenched sexism and sexual assault even as they celebrate their own sexuality. She also shows male students who are more sensitive to women’s concerns, and other men who perpetrate the most cruel misogyny.
Grigoriadis was on the podcast three ye...2017-11-1541 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 54: Matt TullisOn this episode, guest host Steven Kurutz fills in for Matt Tullis, but with good reason. This time around, Tullis is the guest being interviewed.
Earlier this month, Tullis’s book, “Running With Ghosts: A Memoir of Surviving Childhood Cancer” was published by The Sager Group.
In “Running With Ghosts” Tullis, who’s now 41, recounts the months he spent at Akron’s Children’s Hospital fighting for his life, and the years that followed, when he struggled to understand why he’d survived cancer when many of his fellow patients—and even some of his care providers—didn’t.
The book, according to Kurut...2017-09-151h 10
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 53: Thomas LakeThomas Lake is a senior writer at CNN Digital. He just published a three-story series titled "The Trigger and the Choice," which examines multiple aspects of police shootings.
Prior to joining CNN, Lake was the youngest ever senior writer at Sports Illustrated. Some of his most amazing stories include “2 on 5,” which won the Henry Luce Award for most outstanding story for 2008 across all Time Inc. publications; “The Boy They Couldn’t Kill,” which was named one of the 60 best features in the history of Sports Illustrated; and “The Boy Who Died of Football,” which was anthologized in "Next Wave: America’s New Generation...2017-08-0848 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 52: David GrannDavid Grann is a New York Times bestselling author and an award-winning staff writer at The New Yorker magazine. His latest is book, Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI. The book was published in April by Doubleday, and explores one of the most sinister crimes and racial injustices in American history.
Grann’s first book, The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, was adapted into a major motion picture and is in theaters now.
He’s also the author of The Devil and Sherlock Holmes, which cont...2017-06-0733 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 51: Glenn StoutGlenn Stout is the series editor of Best American Sports Writing and the author of the book The Selling of the Babe: The Deal that Changed Baseball and Created a Legend.
Over the last year, Stout has been working with nonfiction writers when it comes to developing book proposals. From July 14-16, he’ll be doing a workshop on that subject at the Archer City Story Center in Archer City, Texas. Stout will also be on the faculty of the story center's week-long literary nonfiction workshop, which takes place July 23-30.
Archer City is the hometown of Larry McMurtry, and is...2017-04-2026 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 50: Michael J. MooneyMichael J. Mooney is a contributing editor at D Magazine in Dallas. He’s also written for GQ, ESPN The Magazine, Grantland, and Outside Magazine, among many others.
This is his second time visiting the podcast. He was the guest on Episode 2, when we talked about his story “The Most Amazing Bowling Story Ever.” That story was ultimately included in Best American Sports Writing.
On this episode, Mooney talks about his story, “My Brother, the Murderer,” which ran in D Magazine in January 2016. He also talks about his piece “Weekend At Johnny’s,” which he wrote after visiting and drinking in many of the b...2017-02-1535 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 49: Tom JunodTom Junod is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine and ESPN.com. He joined ESPN after spending nearly 20 years at Esquire Magazine, which he left after former editor-in-chief David Granger was fired earlier this year.
Junod is one of the most decorated magazine writers of his generation. He has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award 11 times, and has won twice. His story, “The Death of Patient Zero,” won the June L. Biedler Prize for cancer writing earlier this year. He’s been anthologized in The Best American Magazine Writing, Best American Sports Writing, Best American Political Writing, Best A...2016-12-2239 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 48: Steven Kurutz & True StorySteven Kurutz, a features reporter for the New York Times, where he writes about style, culture and design. Kurutz wrote the piece “Fruitland” for Creative Nonfiction magazine’s new series, True Story. The story expands upon a piece he wrote for the New York Times in 2012 headlined “A Time Capsule Set to Song.” That story was about two brothers who put out a record in the 1970s, but didn’t receive fanfare for three decades.
Prior to joining the New York Times, Kurutz was a staff writer at the Wall Street Journal and Details. He is the author of “Like a Rolling Ston...2016-12-1942 min
Gangrey PodcastGangrey Extra: Eli Saslow on "Into The Lonely Quiet"In this short outtake from Episode 26, Eli Saslow and Matt Tullis talk about "Into The Lonely Quiet," Saslow's story about one family whose first-grade son was murdered in the Sandy Hook killings. They also talk about why reporters are often drawn to hard and depressing stories.2016-12-0110 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 47: Sonya HuberSonya Huber is an associate professor of English at Fairfield University. She is the author of five books, including “The Evolution of Hillary Rodham Clinton,” which she wrote for the British publisher Squint Books.
Huber is a reporter, memoirist and essayist who also frequently writes about social issues. Her memoir “Cover Me: A Health Insurance Memoir” delves into the many issues she has experienced in life with health care and insurance.
Her book “Opa Nobody” is a family memoir, as she seeks to understand her grandfather, who was a coal miner, union organizer and social activist in Nazi Germany.
Her new book “Pa...2016-10-1131 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 46: Kathryn MilesKathryn Miles is the author of three books, including “Superstorm: Nine Days Inside Hurricane Sandy.” Her essays and articles have appeared in publications including Audubon, Best American Essays, Boston Globe, Ecotone, The New York Times, Outside, Pacific Standard, Popular Mechanics, and Time.
Her forthcoming book, “Quake Land,” examines the changing face of earthquake hazards in America, and will be published by Dutton in July 2017.
Miles currently serves as writer-in-residence at Green Mountain College, where she also teaches in the college’s low-residence graduate programs. She lives with her family in Portland, Maine.
She recently wrote a piece that appeared in the Boston Globe ab...2016-09-2730 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 5: Stephen RodrickThis week, I talk with Stephen Rodrick, a writer for The New York Times Magazine. He wrote the cover story for the Jan. 10 issue of the Times magazine, titled "The Misfits." Online, thanks to search engine optimization, the story was called "Here is what happens when you cast Lindsay Lohan in your movie." Rodrick was embedded with the cast and crew of the movie, The Canyons, which was directed by Paul Schrader, and starred Lindsay Lohan.
Rodrick has also written the memoir "The Magical Stranger: A Son's Journey into his Father's Life."
Check out Rodrick's Longform page to read more...2016-09-1619 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 6: Jesse LichtensteinJesse Lichtenstein wrote the story, "Do we really want to live without the post office" for the February issue of Esquire. The piece examines the controversy surrounding the future of the postal service, and what life without it would be like. Lichtenstein also makes the argument that the postal service binds the country together in a way little else can.
This is Lichtenstein's first piece in Esquire, but he has written for numerous other publications, including Slate and The New York Times Magazine. He also worked as a fact checker for The New Yorker.2016-09-1622 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 7: Brian MockenhauptBrian Mockenhaupt wrote the Byliner.com original "The Living and the Dead." The story chronicles the traumatic experience of a group of Marines in Afghanistan, as well as their difficulty adjusting to life once stateside. He won the 2013 Michael Kelly Award for the story, and was also a finalist for the National Magazine Award for Feature Writing.
Mockenhaupt is a contributing editor to Readers Digest and Esquire, and is the nonfiction editor of the Journal of Military Experience. He writes regularly for The Atlantic and Outside, and his work has also appeared in Pacific Standard, Backpacker, The New York Times...2016-09-1631 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 8: Luke DittrichLuke Dittrich has been writing for Esquire for about six years. In that time, he's written about a man who lived most of his life with no memory (a man who was also treated by Dittrich's grandfather), the Penn State scandal and the Joplin, Missouri, tornado that killed 160 people. That last story won Dittrich a National Magazine Award in 2012.
Most recently, he wrote the story "The Prophet." The story is about neurosurgeon Dr. Eben Alexander, who claims to have visited heaven in a best-selling book. Dittrich’s piece pretty much debunks those claims.
In this podcast, we talk about many of...2016-09-1647 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 9: Jason FagoneJason Fagone, a Philadelphia-based journalist who writes about science, sports and culture for Wired magazine and Philadelphia magazine. Fagone’s work has also appeared in GQ, Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Slate and Deadspin.
Fagone’s most recent story — "Has Carl June Found a Key to Fighting Cancer?" — is about a cancer researcher who has found a way to treat leukemia using genetically modified T-cells. Since joining the podcast, he has written the book "Ingenious: A True Story of Invention, Automotive Daring and the Race to Revive America," which follows the lives of several people as they attempt...2016-09-1640 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 10: Janet ReitmanJanet Reitman is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone and is the author of Inside Scientology: The Story of America’s Most Secretive Religion.
In July 2013, she wrote the story “Jahar’s World” for Rolling Stone. The story dug deep into the life of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving brother accused of the Boston Marathon bombing. That issue created a huge controversy when the magazine decided to put Tsarnaev on the cover.
Reitman's most recent story for Rolling Stone was a Q&A with Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy, who was elected to the senate just one month before the Sandy Hook shooting...2016-09-1643 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 11: Wright ThompsonWright Thompson is a senior writer for ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine. Thompson is widely regarded as one of the top literary sports journalists in the country. His work has been featured in seven editions of "Best American Sports Writing." This year, his story "Urban Meyer will be home for dinner," was included in the anthology.
2013 was an epic year for Thompson, who reported and wrote several memorable stories, including a profile of Michael Jordan as he turned 50 years old, a story about Italy’s racist soccer thugs, a story about a paralyzed fly rod maker in Montana and a...2016-09-1641 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 12: John Woodrow CoxWhen John Woodrow Cox talked with Matt Tullis on the podcast, he was working at the Tampa Bay Times and writing short narratives. Since then, Cox joined the Washington Post, where he is an enterprise reporter who has written about a flawed sexual assault investigation in the Marines and about a 10-year-old who has HIV.
At the Times, Cox was a general assignment reporter in Pinellas County. He covered breaking news and led long-term investigations into frivolous government spending, military contract fraud and Florida’s prescription pill epidemic. He also wrote feature stories, including the “Dispatches from Next Door” series for th...2016-09-1636 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 13: Jeanne Marie LaskasJeanne Marie Laskas is a correspondent for GQ and the director of The Writing Program at the University of Pittsburgh. She is the author of seven books, including “Hidden America,” as well as the award-winning trilogy of memoirs: “Fifty Acres and Poodle,” “The Exact Same Moon,” and “Growing Girls.”
Since joining the podcast, Laskas turned her story about concussions in the NFL, "Game Brain," into the book "Concussion," which has since been turned into a feature film starring Will Smith.
On this episode of the podcast, we talk with Laskas about her profile of Vice President Joe Biden, "Game Brain," and her most rec...2016-09-1644 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 14: Susan DominusSusan Dominus is a staff writer at the New York Times Magazine. She’s written about everything from higher education to organizational psychology. She also writes celebrity profiles. The most recent focused on Daniel Radcliffe of Harry Potter Fame. The other was about Stephen King and family of writers.
The Radcliffe piece — "Daniel Radcliffe's Next Trick is to Make Harry Potter Disappear" — followed the Harry Potter star as he promoted the independent film "Kill Your Darlings." The story shows just how much life as Harry Potter has affected the young actor.
"Stephen King's Family Business" centered around a family get-together in Mai...2016-09-1630 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 15: Jeremy MarkovichWhen Jeremy Markovich visited the podcast, he was a writer and columnist for Charlotte magazine. He also contributed to SB Nation Longform and Our State magazine, and an Emmy-award winning producer at WCNC-TV. His first story about a blind man who hiked the Appalachian Trail won several awards, including the National City and Regional Magazine Award for Personality Profile.
Markovich is now a senior editor/writer at Our State. Click here to see many of his newer stories for that magazine.
On this episode, we talk with him about two stories he wrote for SB Nation Longform. The first — "Elegy of...2016-09-1638 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 16: Michael KruseWhen Michael Kruse visited the podcast, he was a staff writer on the enterprise team at the Tampa Bay Times. In October and November 2013, Kruse published a three-part series titled "The Last Voyage of the Bounty.” It chronicled a tall wooden ship bound for St. Petersburg, Fla., as she sailed straight into Hurricane Sandy. Sixteen sailors were aboard that ship, and not everyone survived.
Since then, Kruse joined Politico, where he has been writing feature stories on those who ran and are still running for president. He wrote at least two pieces on Jeb Bush, including "Jeb 'Put Me Through He...2016-09-1649 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 17: Chris JonesAt the time of his visit on the podcast, Chris Jones was a writer at large for Esquire, as well as a back-page columnist for ESPN The Magazine. Jones has twice won National Magazine Awards. In 2009, his story “The Things that Carried Him” won for feature writing.
Jones is an expert profile writer. His 2010 piece on the late Roger Ebert is, in our opinion, one of the best celebrity profiles ever written. It’s touching and poignant, showing a side of the film critic that hadn’t been seen since Ebert’s battle with cancer.
Most recently, Jones turned his eye on a m...2016-09-1649 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 18: Flinder BoydFlinder Boyd is a former professional basketball player who now writes longform journalism. For 10 years, he played as a point guard in the lower and upper levels of many professional European basketball leagues.
Now he’s writing, often about basketball. His story “20 Minutes at Rucker Park” profiles a young man’s cross-country journey on a Greyhound bus to New York City’s streetball Mecca.
That story was published on SB Nation Longform. It was subsequently a Longform selection and named by Longreads a Top 5 Longread of the Week. It was also a Nieman Storyboard recommended reading selection and earned Boyd Longread’s...2016-09-1434 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 20: Wil S. HyltonWil S. Hylton wrote the book “Vanished,” which focuses on the modern-day search for one American bomber that crashed over the Pacific Islands during World War II. That bomber carried 11 men, who for decades, were listed as missing in action. Finding that lost bomber gave closure to the families of those men, but it also took an amazing feat of detective work and amazing modern technology.
“Vanished” came out in November 2013 and has garnered praise from newspapers and magazines around the country. Time Magazine said the book contains “passages so expressive that we’re constantly reminded we’re in the hands of a phe...2016-09-1351 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 21: Ben MontgomeryBen Montgomery is an enterprise reporter at the Tampa Bay Times and the author of “Grandma Gatewood’s Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail.”
Montgomery’s book focuses on Emma Gatewood, who at the age of 67, through-hiked the 2,050-mile Appalachian Trail. She was the first woman to ever do so, and later became the first person, male or female, to hike the trail two and then three times. Montgomery’s book doesn’t just chronicle Gatewood’s hikes, but seeks to understand why she took to walking at such an advanced age.
Since joining the podcast, "...2016-09-1351 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 23: Jackie ValleyJackie Valley is a reporter at the Las Vegas Sun. In 2013, she published a seven-part series called “Grace Through Grief.” The series followed Arturo Martinez and his two young sons as they dealt with the brutal murder of their wife and daughter, their mother and sister. The murders happened in April 2012, and Valley covered it as breaking news on her cops beat. She got to know Martinez through her reporting, and he eventually allowed her remarkable access as he recovered from the murders, both physically and emotionally.
This was Valley’s first foray into a large project. She studied journalism at Ken...2016-09-1335 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 24: Mac McClellandMac McClelland is an award-winning journalist who has written for publications like Time Magazine, The New York Times and Mother Jones. She’s reported from every region in the United States, gone undercover in industry and the sex trade and reported internationally from places like Thailand, Haiti, Australia, Burma, Uganda, Turkey and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
McClelland has won awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, the Hillman Foundation, the Online News Association, the Society of Environmental Journalists and the Association for Women in Communications. Her book “For Us Surrender is Out of the Question” was a finalist for th...2016-09-1346 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 25: Walt HarringtonWalt Harrington is a former staff writer for the Washington Post Magazine. He’s now a journalism professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. Harrington has written a number of award-winning books, including "The Everlasting Stream," which was turned into an Emmy-winning PBS documentary.
His book "Intimate Journalism," has been a staple of journalism writing classes for more than 15 years. Last year, he co-edited an anthology called "Next Wave: America’s New Generation of Great Literary Journalists." He produced that book with Esquire writer Mike Sager, a former podcast guest. The book features 19 stories written by journalists who are...2016-09-1351 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 26: Eli SaslowEli Saslow is a reporter at the Washington Post. Earlier this year, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for his series of stories on food stamps in a post-recession America.
Over the course of 2013, Saslow reported and wrote six extraordinary stories that focused on everything from a town in Rhode Island where one-third of the residents receive food stamps to a program that uses school buses to take lunches to kids in rural Tennessee during the summer.
When Matt Tullis talked with him, he was writing a series of stories on another hot-button issue – immigration.
Now he is wr...2016-09-1341 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 27: Earl SwiftEarl Swift is the author of "Auto Biography: A Classic Car, An Outlaw Motorhead, and 57 Years of the American Dream." The book tells the life story of a 1957 Chevy that, at the beginning of the book, is falling apart.
Swift profiles the car’s thirteenth owner, Tommy Arney, who has led an extraordinary life, one that started with a brutal childhood, proceeded into a life of crime and ended up as a somewhat successful and controversial businessman. Arney sets out on a quest to restore the car to its former glory, and Swift is there for all of it. Through th...2016-09-1339 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 28: Seth WickershamSeth Wickersham is a senior writer with ESPN The Magazine and ESPN.com. He joined ESPN right after graduating from the University of Missouri. While he primarily covers the NFL, he has also covered the Athens Olympics, the World Series, the NCAA tournament and the NHL and NBA playoffs.
Since joining the podcast in 2014, Wickersham has gone on to write several noteworthy stories, including two stories he co-wrote with Don Van Natta Jr., "Spygate to Deflategate" and "The Wow Factor." He has a profile on John Elway in the September 7, 2016 issue of ESPN: The Magazine that is getting great reviews.
...2016-09-1342 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 29: Baxter HolmesBaxter Holmes recently joined ESPN as its new Los Angeles Lakers reporter for ESPN.com. Holmes previously wrote for The Boston Globe, where he covered the Boston Celtics. Before that, he was a sports reporter for the Los Angeles Times. It was his first job after graduating from the University of Oklahoma in 2009.
Holmes has won a slew of awards in just a short time as a professional sports writer. He has received Associated Press Sports Editors honors for explanatory reporting, projects reporting, beat reporting and breaking news. Additionally, he received first-place honors in the Game Story and Features categories...2016-09-1335 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 30: Vanessa GrigoriadisVanessa Grigoriadis writes for New York, Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone magazines, among other publications. Grigoriadis calls herself a generalist longform writer. She writes about hot topics in the world and does a lot of celebrity profiles, really good celebrity profiles that dig far beyond what a celebrity’s publicist often wants.
She won a National Magazine Award in profile writing for her profile on Karl Lagerfeld. Her New York Magazine story Gawker and the Rage of the Creative Underclass was a finalist for a National Magazine Award in feature writing.
She recently wrote a piece called Justin Bieber: A Ca...2016-09-1336 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 31: David GiffelsDavid Giffels is a former newspaper reporter who wrote the book “The Hard Way on Purpose: Essays and Dispatches from the Rust Belt.”
Giffels, who grew up and has lived his entire life in Akron, Ohio, writes about the city’s despair and destruction as the rubber industry moved out, as well as Akron’s resurgence. He writes about bowling, rock n roll, thrift stores and sports in a smart and funny way.
Giffels was once a reporter and columnist at the Akron Beacon Journal. While at the Beacon Journal, he worked alongside Chuck Klosterman and Michael Weinreb.
Now Giffels is an as...2016-09-1341 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 45: Michael BrickThis entire episode is devoted to the life, stories and music of Michael Brick. Brick wrote for the New York Times, the Houston Chronicle, the Dallas Morning News, Harper’s Magazine. He also wrote the book “Saving the School.”
Brick passed away in February from colon cancer. He leaves behind a wife a wife and children.
In Brick’s final days, his friends and fellow reporters scrambled to put together a book that contains so many of his amazing stories. That book, “Everyone Leaves Behind a Name,” was published by The Sager Group and is now available. All book proceeds go to Brick’...2016-03-2451 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 19: Mike SagerMike Sager is a bestselling author and award-winning reporter who has been called the beat poet of American journalism. He currently works as a writer at large for Esquire Magazine, and is also the editor and publisher of The Sager Group, a consortium of multimedia artists and writers.
Sager recently co-edited the book, "Next Wave: America’s New Generation of Great Literary Journalists." He’s also released a collection of his own magazine stories called "The Someone You’re Not," as well as a novel titled "High Tolerance."
Sager began his journalism career in the Washington Post newsroom, working for Bob Wo...2016-02-2545 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 44: Kaylen Ralph and Joanna DemkiewiczKaylen Ralph and Joanna Demkiewicz are the founders of The Riveter Magazine, which just put out its fourth issue. They are both graduates of the University of Missouri journalism school. The Riveter publishes longform work by female reporters only. The idea for the magazine stemmed from the fact that, in 2012, while Ralph and Demkiewicz were students, the National Magazine Awards put out its list of nominees, and there wasn't a single female nominated in the reporting, feature writing, profile writing, essays and criticism or columns and commentary categories.
Ralph and Demkiewicz recently collaborated on the book, “Newswomen: Twenty-Five Years of Fr...2016-02-2547 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 4: Kelley Benham FrenchKelley Benham French of the Tampa Bay Times wrote the three-part series “Never let go.” The story focuses on the birth of Juniper French, the daughter of Kelley and husband Tom French (as in Pulitzer Prize-winning Tom French). Juniper was born at 23 weeks, six days and weighed just one pound, four ounces at birth.
While written in the first-person, this story is not your typical piece of memoir. Benham reported the hell out of this story, starting with more than 7,000 pages of medical records and continuing on with extensive interviews with ever doctor, nurse and social worker involved in her daug...2016-02-0228 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 43: Lane DeGregoryLane DeGregory is a Pulitzer Prize-winning feature writer at the Tampa Bay Times. In early January, the Times published a long story by DeGregory, told in three chapters, about a five-year-old girl whose father killed her by dropping her off a bridge into the ocean.
“The Long Fall of Phoebe Jonchuck” is a brutal yet powerful piece that shows how a sweet little girl was the victim of a child protective services system that let far too many children fall through the cracks. The editor on this story was Kelley Benham French, now a professor of practice at the Indiana Univ...2016-02-0240 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 42: Ed CaesarEd Caesar is the author of “Two Hours: The Quest to Run the Impossible Marathon.” The book chronicles the attempts of the world’s greatest marathon runners to inch closer and closer to the magical two-hour mark, and follows one runner in particular, Geoffrey Mutai.
Caesar has contributed to The New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, the Atlantic, Outside, The Smithsonian Magazine, the Sunday Times Magazine and British GQ. He’s reported from a wide range of countries including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kosovo, and Iran. He’s written about secretive Russian oligarchs, African civil wars, marathon tennis matches, B...2016-01-1338 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 32: Brandon SneedBrandon Sneed wrote the book “Behind the Drive: A Story of Passion, Dreams, Demons, and Highway 55, the World’s Next Favorite Burger Joint.” The book is a collaborative effort with Kenney Moore, the man who started the popular restaurant.
Despite Sneed’s youth, this is already his second book. His first was titled “Edge of Legend: An Incredible Story of Faith and Basketball.” That book was about a dominant Division 2 basketball player.
Sneed writes often about sports, and has also written for publications like GQ, ESPN The Magazine, Pacific Standard, Outside and SB Nation Longform. His story “The Prospect” was noted in “Best A...2015-12-2442 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 22: Eva HollandEva Holland is a freelance writer and editor based in Canada’s Yukon Territory. She writes for several publications, including Vela Magazine and SB Nation Longform. She is the co-editor of World Hum, a website devoted to the best travel stories on the Internet.
In 2013, Holland had pieces from Vela Magazine listed as notable in both Best American Essays and Best American Sports Writing. She’s written two stories for SB Nation Longform that were aggregated by Longform.org. One focused on the handlers who help sled dog racers in the one-thousand mile Yukon Quest. The other story is about call...2015-12-2433 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 41: Chuck KlostermanChuck Klosterman is the author of six books of nonfiction and two novels. His most recent book, "I Wear the Black Hat: Grappling with Villains (Real and Imagined)" was a New York Times bestseller.
In the two most recent issues of GQ, Klosterman has interviewed Taylor Swift and Tom Brady. In fact, he's done several celebrity interviews this year, including Kobe Bryant and Eddie Van Halen.
He’s written for Grantland, Esquire, GQ, Spin, the Washington Post, the Guardian, the Believer, and the A.V. Club. He currently serves as The Ethicist for the New York Times Magazine.2015-11-2448 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 40: Robert Sanchez and Bradford PearsonThis episode of the podcast features the work of Robert Sanchez of 5280 magazine in Denver and Bradford Pearson.
Sanchez is a senior staff writer for 5280. In 2014, he was named the City and Regional Magazine Association’s Writer of the Year. He also won that organization’s award for best profile in 2014, for his story “The Rise and Fall of Terrance Roberts.” Sanchez has been a finalist for the City and Regional Magazine Association Writer of the Year three times, and is also a three-time finalist for the prestigious Livingston Awards for Young Journalists. His work has been anthologized twice in “Best Ameri...2015-11-0658 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 1: Justin HeckertIn the first episode of Gangrey: The Podcast, Matt Tullis talks with freelance writer Justin Heckert, who wrote the story “The Hazards of Growing Up Painlessly” for The New York Times Magazine. The story was published in November, and is about Ashlyn Blocker, a teenager who suffers from congenital insensitivity to pain.2015-10-3123 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 33: Brooke JarvisBrooke Jarvis is a longform narrative and environmental journalist who lives in Seattle. One of Jarvis’s more recent stories, “The Deepest Dig,” will be included in The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2015. She is a 2015 Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellow, reporting on the advent of deep-sea mining. That is what her story, which ran in the The California Sunday Magazine in November 2014, is about.
More recently, Jarvis wrote the story “Homeward.” That story was also published by The California Sunday Magazine, and is about a young man from the jungles of Ecuador, whose village sent him stateside so he could be e...2015-10-0730 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 34: Mike WilsonMike Wilson is finishing up his first few months as the new editor of the Dallas Morning News. Wilson came to Dallas from ESPN’s FiveThirtyEight website, where he was managing editor.
Before that, he was the editor of the St. Petersburg/Tampa Bay Times. While in St. Petersburg, Wilson oversaw a staff of incredibly talented writers and reporters, many of whom have been featured on this podcast, reporters like Ben Montgomery, Michael Kruse and Kelley Benham French. During the podcast, we talk about a series of stories that ran in the St. Petersburg Times called Encounters. One by Kruse wa...2015-10-0740 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 39: Glenn Stout & Jeremy CollinsThis episode of Gangrey: The Podcast is focused solely on the “The Best American Sports Writing 2015,” which is now on sale at bookstores across the country. This year marks the 25th edition of the book, and it was guest edited by Wright Thompson.
The podcast opens with a conversation with Glenn Stout, the series editor. Stout also serves as the longform editor of SB Nation, and has edited all four pieces that host Matt Tullis has written for the Website. That includes “The Ghosts I Run With,” which you can hear on Episode 37.
In the second segment, Jeremy Collins talks about hi...2015-10-061h 00
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 35: Michael GraffMichael Graff is the editor of Charlotte Magazine and is a freelance writer for SB Nation Longform, Washingtonian Magazine and Politico. Before taking over Charlotte Magazine, Graff was an editor and writer for Our State Magazine in North Carolina for four years.
On June 4, SB Nation Longform published Graff’s piece, “Two Lanes to Accokeek.” The story is an at times graphic story about a street race that turned tragic in the most unimaginable way.
In this podcast, we talk about that story as well as some of Graff’s work with Charlotte Magazine, including a story about the world’s greatest...2015-10-0554 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 36: Nathan ThornburghThis week, Gangrey: The Podcast gets a makeover.
This week’s episode has three segments, starting with Nathan Thornburgh, a chief editor and publisher of the website roadsandkingdoms.com. Thornburgh spent much of the last decade as a foreign correspondent and editor for TIME Magazine. He’s reported on everything from cyber war in Russia to information wars in Georgia – not the state Georgia, by the way — to drug wars in Juarez. He also co-founded the parenting blog DadWagon.
We’re going to talk about his story, “The Root of All Things.” Mike Wilson mentioned the story in Episode 34 and said he had be...2015-10-0545 minGangrey PodcastEpisode 38: Kim Cross & Karen BenderOur first guest this week is Kim Cross. Cross is the author of “What Stands In a Storm: Three Days in the Worst Superstorm To Hit the South’s Tornado Alley.” Cross, who lives in Alabama, experienced those storms, although not to the extent of the people she writes about.
Cross has written for The Anniston Star and the Birmingham News. She was a spot news reporter for the New Orleans Times Picayune and the Tampa Bay Times. She has also been an editor at Southern Living and Cooking Light magazines.
In our second segment, we talk with fiction writer Karen...2015-09-2953 min
Gangrey PodcastEpisode 37: Tyler CabotThis week’s episode once again features three segments.
The first is a talk with Tyler Cabot, an articles editor for Esquire Magazine. Cabot also directs the magazine’s research and development. He spearheaded the revamping of Esquire Classic, which now includes access to every issue Esquire has ever published.
Cabot has said that today, he is focused with finding new ways to tell and sell stories, and that is evident in Esquire Classic. On that new site, you can read Gay Talese’s landmark celebrity profile, “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” and you can read it as it appeared in the Apr...2015-09-1550 min