One house,
several doors
Everything here is mine — reported, written, photographed, and published under my own name. Each room keeps its own clothes. That is how houses work.
The Cook Book
A memoir and a manifesto out of one South Georgia county — told out of order, the way memory actually arrives. Because I’m not done yet.
Enter → § 02HereThe Parrish Line
Early 1873, J.T. Wilkes’ store. A Parrish covers eight letters on the word Philadelphia and a town gets its name. Buffalo Bill, Rosalyn, Dora Agnes, and a man who carried a bullet in his arm for fifty years.
Enter → § 03HereThe Archive
Fifty million watermelons go to market. Then & now. A president passed through. What the ground remembers. My people.
Enter → § 04LiveDead Man Coming
My father’s 1983 account of the Alday murders — ten thousand copies, sold out, out of print for forty years. The authorized reprint: numbered, signed, and nearly spoken for.
Reserve a copy → § 05LiveNo Holds Barred
One reporter, one camera, and press credentials to the rawest show on earth — shot from the lip of the cage while the world was still arguing about what to call it. 112 plates.
Enter → § 06LiveAll the Pretty Tractors
Georgia to Washington at twelve miles an hour, winter 1978–79, shot at age eleven from the bunk over the cab. Forty-four plates, developed in our darkroom and found in an envelope decades later.
Enter → § 07HereThe White Shirt
Three Brooks Brothers shirts on a blue-tag day at Goodwill, ninety-nine cents each, and everything a man’s white shirt has ever meant. An essay.
Read → § 08HereThe Hornet Gazette
Cook County High, Class B state champions, 1949. The clippings, the lineups, the train ride, and the Hornets who brought the title home.
Enter → § 09HerePortfolio & Bylines
Thirty years of bylines, in print, under my own name. Penthouse, Soldier of Fortune — first woman on the masthead — Men’s Journal, Razor, Black Belt, UFC from the beginning. Hire or license from here.
Enter → § 10HereAbout a Girl
Two monsters in one year, a darkroom at seven, a cage at twenty-seven, six continents, and the long road back to Exit 11. Who this is, and how she got home.
Enter →Everything I know
I learned on a porch
A screen door is the most honest thing in a Southern house. It lets the air through and it keeps the flies out. You can see who is coming and they can see you seeing them. It never once pretended to be a wall.
It is also the only door in the house that announces you. It slaps shut behind every child who ever ran out of a kitchen. That sound is the reason I am writing any of this down.
Let’s talk about the story.
Assignments, commissions, and collaborations worldwide. Send me the story you cannot get anybody to sit with long enough. That is the one I want.