matttullis

Episode 62: Leah Sottile

Leah Sottile is a freelance writer who, most recently, authored and hosted “Bundyville,” a four-part story series and seven-episode podcast, which was presented by Longreads and Oregon Public Broadcasting.

The project is the deepest dive yet into the Bundy family — that’s the family that fought back against federal law enforcement officers out west not once, but twice, a few years ago — and how they have become a symbol for those who feel the government is keeping them from living their true lives.

Sottile’s features, profiles and investigative work has been featured frequently by the Washington Post, Playboy, California Sunday, Outside Magazine, Longreads, and many other publications.

Before freelancing, she was a staff writer at The Inlander, in Spokane, Washington, where she wrote about music, and was the host of two very late-night heavy metal radio programs.

Episode 61: Brantley Hargrove

Brantley Hargrove is the author of “The Man Who Caught The Storm: The Life of Legendary Tornado Chaser Tim Samaras,” which was published by Simon & Schuster in April. The book is about a legendary storm chaser who, despite never going to college, was a hugely successful engineer who also managed to record the first meteorological data from inside a massive tornado.

The book has gotten rave reviews. Hampton Sides, the author of “In the Kingdom of Ice,” said that “The Man Who Caught the Storm” is “a thrilling tale of Promethean defiance.” The Washington Post said that Hargrove is “one of today’s best science writers” who “takes the reader not only on a journey through the remarkable life of engineer-explorer Samaras, but also through the beautifully desolate roads of the Plains while on the chase.”

Hargrove has written for Wired, Popular Mechanics, and Texas Monthly, among other publications. He’s gone inside the effort to reverse-engineer super tornadoes using super computers. He’s chased violent storms from the Great Plains to the Texas Coast. But he’s also done more than just write about devastating storms. He has also explored the world of South American jewel thieves who terrorize diamond dealers in South Florida.

Episode 60: Terrence McCoy

Terrence McCoy covers poverty, inequality and social justice in urban and rural America for the Washington Post.

In February, he wrote the story “I don’t know how you got this way.” That piece is about how a young neo-Nazi has revealed himself to his family, and how his mother and grandmother are left wondering if they will ever get him back.

He served in the United States Peace Corps in Cambodia, an experience that ultimately led to “The Playground,” a Kindle single available on Amazon. That book was named by the Washington Post as one of the best nonfiction books of 2013.

His story “Today, Her Whole Life Is a Free Skate” was included in Best American Sports Writing 2017.

One of his recent stories was about a family whose 6-year-old daughter was killed by the flu. A year ago, McCoy wrote a series about people who were dying while waiting to be approved for disability assistance, something that has already sparked some change in Washington, D.C.

Gangrey Extra: Matt Tullis on Running With Ghosts

This is a special, mini-episode of the podcast, and one that host Matt Tullis admits is greatly self-promotional.

He has made a trailer for his book, “Running With Ghosts: A Memoir of Surviving Childhood Cancer.” Some authors have been making or have had made book trailers for several years now, and he thought it would be fun to try and do one himself.

The video — which has been embedded on gangreythepodcast.com — consists of a reading of the prologue from the book, as well as photos that are tied to the days when Tullis had leukemia. There are also photos of the cancer patients he writes about who didn’t survive.

Episode 59: Don Van Natta Jr.

Don Van Natta Jr. is a senior writer for ESPN Digital and Print media. He was recently named a finalist — along with his reporting and writing partner Seth Wickersham — for a National Magazine Award in reporting for three stories: “Sin City or Bust,” “Standing Down,” and “Roger Goodell has a Jerry Jones problem.” Wickersham appeared on Episode 28 of the podcast, back in 2014.

Van Natta has had quite the illustrious career. He’s been on three Pulitzer Prize winning reporting teams — two at the New York Times and one at the Miami Herald.

He joined ESPN in 2012, and has since produced many features and investigative pieces centered around the NFL. His profile of Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones in August 2014 is particularly amazing because of the access he got from a subject who initially did not want to participate.

In 2014, Van Natta started the Sunday Long Read newsletter with Jacob Feldman, a reporter for Sports Illustrated. The two launched the Sunday Long Read podcast in August of last year, and so far has produced more than a dozen episodes featuring some amazing reporters and writers.

Van Natta is currently working on a book with Wickersham. The book, tentatively titled “Powerball,” will be published by Crown Archetype in 2020.

Episode 58: Leonora LaPeter Anton

Leonora LaPeter Anton is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter on the Tampa Bay Times’ enterprise team. In January, the Times published her story, “Gang raped at 17. Therapy at 65.”

The story follows the attempt of Evelyn Robinson to cope with a horrific rape, 48 years after it happened.

LaPeter Anton has been at the Tampa Bay Times since 2000. She won a Pulitzer for her work in an investigation into the failing mental hospitals in the state of Florida.

She also contributes to the newspaper’s occasional series, Encounters, which are short narratives about people living ordinary lives in south Florida. Her most recent Encounter focused on a woman applying for a job at Subway.

LaPeter Anton grew up in Connecticut and Greece, and studied journalism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Episode 57: Christopher Goffard

On this episode of Gangrey: The Podcast, host and producer Matt Tullis talks with Christopher Goffard about “Dirty John,” a combination print series and podcast. Goffard is an author and staff writer for the Los Angeles Times. “Dirty John” focuses on the relationship between Deborah Newell and John Meehan. It was a relationship Deborah’s children hated, and one that ended in the death of one person.

Goffard shared in the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for the LA Times’ investigation into the city of Bell, California. He has twice been a Pulitzer finalist for feature writing, in 2007 and 2014. His book, “You Will See Fire: A Search for Justice in Kenya” was based on his LA Times’ series and was published in 2011.

He’s also a successful fiction writer. His novel “Snitch Jacket” was a finalist for the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best First Novel in 2008.

Episode 56: Michael Kruse

Michael Kruse has been a senior staff writer at Politico for nearly four years. In that time, he has gone from writing deep profiles of presidential candidates to criss-crossing the country in an effort to understand the current state of politics in America.

One of Kruse’s most recent stories focused on Johnstown, Penn., a city and region that voted heavily for President Donald Trump. This story follows up on several people Kruse interviewed when he was in Johnstown just after the election.

Kruse also recently profiled Sen. Cory Booker, D-New Jersey in a piece headlined “Cory Booker Loves Donald Trump.”

Kruse has won the Paul Hansell Award for Distinguished Achievement in Florida Journalism and the American Society of News Editors’ distinguished non-deadline writing award. This is his third time on the podcast. He was the featured guest on Episode 16, when he talked about his three-part series “The Last Voyage of the Bounty,” which in the Tampa Bay Times. He was also on Episode 45 with Ben Montgomery, Thomas Lake Wright Thompson and Tony Rehagen, as they reminisced about the late Michael Brick.

Episode 55: Vanessa Grigoriadis

This week’s guest is Vanessa Grigoriadis, whose first book, “Blurred Lines: Rethinking Sex, Power and Consent on Campus,” was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in early September. The book reveals a new sexual revolution taking place across the country, one in which college students are on the front lines.

Her reporting shows women who are using savvy methods to fight entrenched sexism and sexual assault even as they celebrate their own sexuality. She also shows male students who are more sensitive to women’s concerns, and other men who perpetrate the most cruel misogyny.

Grigoriadis was on the podcast three years ago. In Episode 30, we talked primarily about her celebrity profiles. Toward the end of that episode, though, we talked briefly about a story she had done for New York Magazine that focused on Emma Sulkowicz, the young woman at Columbia University who had been carrying a mattress around everywhere she went to bring light to the fact she had been sexually assaulted, and the university had done little or nothing about it. Sulkowicz ends up kicking off Blurred Lines. The first chapter is titled Mattress Girl.

She very recently wrote an op-ed in the New York Times about what the Harvey Weinstein effect can tell us about campus sexual assault.

Grigoriadis is a contributing editor at the New York Times Magazine and Vanity Fair, specializing in pop culture, youth movements, and crime reporting. She has won a National Magazine Award, and been anthologized regularly, including in Next Wave: America’s New Generation of Great Literary Journalists.

Episode 54: Matt Tullis

On this episode, former podcast guest Steven Kurutz fills in for Matt Tullis, but only because our regular host is the one being interviewed.

Earlier this month, Tullis’s book, “Running With Ghosts: A Memoir of Surviving Childhood Cancer” was published by The Sager Group. The books expands upon “The Ghosts I Run With,” which was published by SB Nation Longform in April 2015.

In “Running With Ghosts” Tullis, who’s now 41, recounts the months he spent at Akron’s Children’s Hospital fighting for his life, and the years that followed, when he struggled to understand why he’d survived cancer when many of his fellow patients—and even some of his care providers—didn’t.

The book, according to Kurutz, is emotionally honest and moving and, although it’s a personal story based on memory, incredibly well reported.

Tullis is, of course, the host and producer of Gangrey: The Podcast. He’s also the director of the Digital Journalism program at Fairfield University. He is an associate editor for River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative, and has been noted in Best American Sports Writing three times and Best American Essays once. He was a daily newspaper reporter for about 10 years, culminating at the Columbus Dispatch, and has written for SB Nation Longform, Sports on Earth, Nieman Storyboard and Yahoo!’s The Post Game, among many other publications.