I’m an Austin-based journalist, author, and editor. Formerly the executive editor at the Texas Observer, a statewide nonprofit news outlet, I’ve written about housing, transportation, and urban development for The New York Times, Texas Monthly, The Guardian, and Bloomberg’s CityLab. For the Texas Observer, I covered violations of the Fair Housing Act across Texas, uncovered evictions filed illegally during the pandemic, and investigated the tenant screening industry. My writing has also been published in The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times.

My second book, City Limits: Infrastructure, Inequality, and the Future of America's Highways, will be published by Crown on April 2, 2024. (Order it here!) City Limits covers the troubling history of America’s urban highways and the battle over their future in Austin, Dallas, and Houston, following residents who risk losing their homes and businesses to planned expansions and examining successful highway removals in cities like Rochester, New York, to argue that we must dismantle these city-splitting roadways to ensure a more just, sustainable future. In 2023, City Limits was shortlisted for the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award.

I’m also the author of Unprocessed: My City-Dwelling Year of Reclaiming Real Food (William Morrow 2015), a memoir of my year-long journey of eating only whole, unprocessed foods, intertwined with a journalistic exploration of what “unprocessed” really means, why it matters, and how to afford it. Unprocessed was named a Southwest Book of the Year in 2015.

I hold an MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of Arizona, speak fluent Spanish, and always eat breakfast. I’m represented by Mackenzie Brady Watson at the Stuart Krichevsky Literary Agency.