RE-PUBLISHED ON VELA MAGAZINE. This essay was a finalist for the 2013 Annie Dillard Prize and won that year’s essay prize from The Pinch, where it was published in the Spring 2014 issue. It is now available to read online compliments of Vela. …Perhaps my navigational equipment is damaged. Perhaps I …
BEST AMERICAN TRAVEL WRITING “NOTABLE”/PUBLISHED ON VELA MAGAZINE: In those first months living in El Salvador, had I walked down a village street and seen young men leaning against gaping doorframes, their eyes steady upon me, I would have read the wrong story. Then, I could barely speak, let alone interpret …
PUBLISHED ON VELA MAGAZINE. “Having a horse here is like having a motorbike in the city,” Bhupendra Sherchan explained the first day we rode out together on the flanks of snow-capped Nilgiri. The day was still pleasant and autumn-like, the light white, the winds as gentle as the sheep eddies in …
PUBLISHED IN GUERNICA. Each Sunday the avenue that wends its way between the two whitewashed churches of Chichicastenango, Guatemala, becomes a maze of pole-and-plastic-tarp shops hung with brilliant tapestries, embroidered blouses, kaleidoscopic quilts. Within the haze of palo santo smoke, which wafts out of the larger of the two churches, are …