Contributors | July/August 2005


Jennifer Gonnerman (“The Unforgiven”) is a staff writer for the Village Voice, where she has covered the criminal justice system since 1997. Her first book, Life on the Outside: The Prison Odyssey of Elaine Bartlett, was a finalist for the National Book Award, and state legislative leaders have credited it with helping to reform New York’s notorious Rockefeller drug laws.


Sara Catania (“The Counselor”) is based in Los Angeles and specializes in stories on criminal and social justice. She was a 2004 John S. Knight Journalism Fellow.


Randall Patterson (“Home Sour Home”) is a freelance writer based in Asheville, North Carolina. Having worked in Houston for eight years, he says that returning there to report on hell-raising homeowner Jordan Fogal reminded him “what a Wild West town it is—how the only real law, at least when it comes to consumers, is the law of the jungle.”


JoAnn Wypijewski (“The Days of Bread and Roses”) is a former senior editor of The Nation. Her previous story for Mother Jones, “Living in an Age of Fire” (March/April 2003), was about the “Lackawanna Six,” members of Buffalo’s Yemeni community who allegedly trained with Al Qaeda.


Jennifer Gonnerman
Sara Catania
JoAnn Wypijewski











Rebecca Solnit
Alan Light

James K. Galbraith (“Fair, Not Balanced”) teaches economics at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas-Austin. He previously served in several positions on the staff of the U.S. Congress, including executive director of the Joint Economic Committee.


Rebecca Solnit (“War Visible”) is the author of 10 books, including A Field Guide to Getting Lost, forthcoming this summer, and River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West, which won both a Guggenheim and a National Book Critics Circle award. She has also been a recipient of the Lannan Literary Award.<


Alan Light (“Long Road Home”) has served as the editor-in-chief of the music magazines Tracks, Spin, and Vibe. He is the pop-music correspondent for the syndicated National Public Radio show “Weekend America” and has been a curatorial consultant for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. He is currently completing an oral history of the Beastie Boys, scheduled for publication later this year.