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A philosophy, psychology and history student at my university, I never attended a single journalism class and gained a foothold as a reporter in the face of adversity. My lowest point as a fleddling journalist was getting hired by a small town newpaper that, I later learned, painfully, did not exist. By dint of stubborness and unwillingness to experiment with other fields, I became a devoted practitioner of explanatory journalism, from roots in "alternative" weekly newspapers (especially The Berkeley Barb and Willamette Week in Portland) to prime-time assignments on major dailies, such as The San Jose Mercury News and The Wall Street Journal, where I was first the lead Silicon Vallley writer and later a roving global correspondent based in London. Alomg the way, I made forays into column writing on innovation for The New York Times and magazine writing for Time Inc.'s magazines, Technology Review, Mother Jones, The New Republic and Spectrum. By the end of my immersive experience as a scribe, I came to view myself as a literary journalist, a promoter of public understanding and a teller of true human tales. 

Literary Journalism became the label for my brand of reportage, and also the foundation for an academic approach to the study of non-fiction as literature. At Arizona State University, I designed a small program for scientists and scholars under the rubric of "Masters of Non-fiction," both to promote an appreciation for fine writing about the real world and to teach foundational skills for practice. Among the models I extolled was George Orwell (above).

"Masters of Nonfiction" represents my conceptual approach to marrying literary values with the pursuit and creation of new knowledge, especially knowledge arising at the intersection of science, engineering and the humanities. The aim is to nourish the creation of serious and durable non-fiction based on the author's knowledge and expertise, style (voice) and craft (technique), in roughly equal measures. The "masters of nonfiction" framework focus on strengthening the writer's capacity to engage wider audiences and non-specialist readers through vernacular writing of literary quality about urgent, complex socio-technical subjects. Writing activities will be supported by directed readings of masters in literary nonfiction and throughemulationof master practices that nourish and sustain excellence in writing, scholarship and publishing. My premise is that the connection between reading and writing is strong. What you read influences how you write, and how you write shapes your choices of what to read.
In both teaching and writing literary non-fiction, I rely on two techniques, emulation and mastery of time, or chronology. The ability to write a coherent narrative can be learned, or improved upon, by closely reading some of the great masters: Orwell, Carson, Mencken, Crane, Hersey, Krakauer, Talese, Ehrenreich, Didion, Thurston, Haley (to name on some of the many writers worthy of emulation). Chronological time can be an engine for literary narrative, and the mastery of chronology begins with documentation: time-coded notes, and establishing what characters do in parallel time. The canonical text of Genesis teaches the value of time-coding, and in classic essays, such as George Orwell's "A Hanging," time propels the narrative and imposes constraints on characters that shape their actions and their sense of signficance. The final aspect of literarty non-fiction that I stress is voice. Strong insistent original and even raw voices are desired by readers today even in the non-fiction they read. While voice is not the lone value borrowed from fiction writing, voice is perhaps the most essential in elevating non-fiction writing from the realm of information to the arena of literature and poetic sensibility. 

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