writing

• "Back When We Lived Here"
• A moment in the life of a Bywater bar.
  The Normal School
  

• "In the Year of the Storm: The Topography of Resurrection in New Orleans"
• A year in the destroyed city
  Harper's
  

• "The Swarm: An Eruption in the French Quarter"
• The clash of man and termite, reported from New Orleans.
  Harper's
  

• "The Duke"
• An obsession with cigarettes, power, and immortality.
  Southern Cultures
  

• "The Art of Politics"
• General Wesley Clark's next move is anybody's guess.
  The Oxford American
  

• "The Lion in Summer"
• A profile of Winston Groom in his mountain retreat, where there are no Gumps.
  The Mobile Register
  

• "The Pickle Predicament"
• Essay on nostalgia, marketing, and the triumph of the pickle.
  The Independent
  

• "Newspaper Columns"
• Short essays from Pittsboro, North Carolina.
  The Chapel Hill News
  

• "Futures Market"
• Essay on risk, and the boredom of a golf range attendant.
  Lather Weekly
  

• "Purification"
• Essay on basketball and time.
  The Independent
  

• "Measures of Success"
• Essay on publishing.
  Poets and Writers
  

• "A Short History of Stonecutter Mills"
• Paper on the effects of textile mill closings on the small town of Spindale, North Carolina. Presented at a conference sponsored by the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina.
  The Center for the Study of the American South
  

• "Semper Fi"
• Essay on the Marines and 9/11.
  The Independent