Episode 78: Bronwen Dickey

Bronwen Dickey is a contributing editor at The Oxford American and the author of Pit Bull: The Battle Over an American Icon.

In October 2019, her story “The Remains” was published by Esquire. The story looks at forensic anthropology, and one case in particular.

“The story is about a young man named Christian Gonzalez, who came to this country when he was very, very young with his family, and grew up in East Texas and considered himself, as did his friends and family, to be American,” Dickey says. “And then he was deported after kind of a weird conflagration of events, and he was deported to Mexico. He really did not know his home at all and felt very lonely there. He tried to get back into the United States, and he died in the South Texas desert.

Dickey opens The Remains with a scene that is very detailed, showing the forensic anthropologists doing their work on the remains of Christian Gonzalez. That work was done many years ago, though, which means Dickey had to recreate the scene through solid reporting.

“Recreation is one of the parts of writing that I enjoy the most,” Dickey says, “Because it’s kind of like going on a historical scavenger hunt a little bit, trying to find the details that’ll fit into the puzzle of the picture you’re trying to build.”

Dickey has written for The Oxford American, Esquire, Outside, Men’s Journal, Garden and Gun, the New York Times, and so many more publications. She’s received the Hearst Editorial Excellence Award in reporting, and a Lowell Thomas Award in travel journalism. 

Her story “Climb Aboard, Ye Who Seek the Truth,” was published by Popular Mechanics, and was a finalist for the 2017 National Magazine Award in feature writing.