What is Letters of Rec?

Monthly posts from a nonfiction/true crime professor about what I'm reading, watching, and listening to.

Who am I?

I wrote the memoir Son of a Gun and the book-length essay Bookmarked: Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. My writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Tin House, New England Review, DIAGRAM, and many other publications, as well as anthologies including Best of the West and The Pushcart Prize. Sometimes I make podcasts.

I grew up in a working-class military family in rural Arizona, attended the University of Arizona—where I was a first-generation college student—and was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford. I’m an associate professor at Oregon State, where I teach nonfiction and true crime courses.

Some recent-ish writing:

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Monthly posts from a nonfiction & true crime professor about what I'm reading, watching, and listening to.

People

I'm the author of two books, the memoir Son of a Gun and a book-length essay about Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, and an associate professor at Oregon State, where I teach nonfiction and true crime.