Sounding

"Journalism became a vehicle to pursue the kinds of narratives that first got me interested in history: those that question the official story and defy power"

As a reporter, I have written numerous stories about people. I hope I got as many stories right as I could, but I’m sure I missed many, too. The one…

It’s odd that we forget people in our reporting. We’re people. Everyone around us is a person, however annoying their habits might be. People want to know about people; gossip…

I didn’t always know I wanted to be a reporter. I came at it sideways, in college, after deciding to major in creative writing. There’s no career path for writing…

I came into journalism in a roundabout way. I was a voracious reader as a child, growing up in middle-class Nairobi, partly as a retreat from a difficult home situation…

The very first time I viewed a William H. Johnson painting, the work moved me so deeply, I immediately declared him my favorite artist.I was barely a teenager. I didn’t…

While on assignment in Somalia a few years back, I found myself sitting in the waiting room of the Mogadishu mayor’s office alongside a dozen Somali men—some in white robes,…

My grandmother was well known for telling extraordinary tales. One in particular has stuck with me since the summer I was dispatched alone to her in Delhi. At the time…

Two years ago, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette gave me the reporting opportunity of a lifetime—go to the Dominican Republic and Cuba to write about the dynamics of the baseball culture on each…

Three years ago I worked as a news editor at Donbass, the largest newspaper and news website in my native city of Donetsk in Eastern Ukraine. I was responsible for…