MORE ABOUT ME

I'm a former foreign correspondent who has reported from North America, Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

 

My first book, THE BIG 100: The New World of Super-Aging (2023, Diversion Books), was inspired by two extraordinary women. I first told the world the astonishing story of Jeanne Calment, who lived to 122, when I was based in France for The Associated Press. And my own grandmother, Marie Mercurio Sansone, was born in 1899 and died in 2003, just shy of her 104th birthday, after a life that touched parts of three centuries.

 

I was a 2022 fellow in aging journalism at Columbia University in New York and at the National Press Foundation in Washington, D.C.

I joined AP in Detroit, where I wrote about Dr. Jack Kevorkian, his suicide machine, and the spirited national conversation around individual end-of-life decisions. As an AP foreign correspondent, I covered some big stories, including the crash that killed Princess Diana, the arrest of former Yugoslav strongman Slobodan Milosevic, the death of Pope John Paul II and Kosovo’s independence. (My favorite assignment? Covering poor Pluto's demotion to a dwarf planet at a meeting of leading astronomers in Prague.)

 

My second book, IN GUNS WE TRUST: The Unholy Trinity of White Evangelicals, Politics, and Firearms, sprang from decades of personal experience with evangelical Christianity. I left that movement because of its stance on guns, immigrants, LGBTQ+ people and other social issues, and I identify today as an "exvangelical." Faith remains very important to me, but I can't in good conscience continue in the evangelical tradition.

I've been fortunate enough to win a number of awards, but the one I'm most proud of is from the Society of American Business Editors & Writers for an investigation into the exploitation of undocumented immigrants by the Walmart retail chain.

 

I grew up in Massachusetts, studied journalism at Boston University, and speak French, Dutch and German. Today I live in Rhode Island, where you might see me running the roads or fly fishing and sailing on the upper reaches of Narragansett Bay.