Honors & Awards

  • Winner of the 2024 Ellen Meloy Fund's Desert Writers Award (and runner-up in 2023)

  • Nonfiction finalist for the 2023 Barbara Deming Memorial Fund grant

  • "A Garden in the Desert" was a notable essay in Best American Science and Nature Writing 2022

  • 3rd place for the Society of Environmental Journalists’ 2022 Kevin Carmody Award for Outstanding Investigative Reporting

  • Finalist for 2019 James Beard Award for Investigative Reporting

  • Tom Howard/John H. Reid Fiction & Essay Contest

    2022: Honorable Mention for “A Garden in the Desert”

    2017: 1st Place for "The Mule Deer"

    2016: Finalist for “Precarious Things”

  • 2020 Winner of SABEW Best in Business Award for "America's Rural Radio Stations are Vanishing"

  • Finalist for 2019 Salute of Excellence Award, for exemplary coverage of African/African-American people or issues, awarded by the National Association of Black Journalists

  • Honorable Mention in the National Press Foundation’s 2017 Carolyn C. Mattingly Award for Mental Health Reporting 

  • 2nd place, Features, 2019 North American Agriculture Journalists Writing Contest

  • “Letter to America” included in the anthology Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy (Trinity Press, 2020)

  • 2019 Arizona Commission on the Arts grant recipient

  • Arizona Press Club Writing Competition

    2017: 1st place: Community Arts Reporting; 2nd place: Community Personality Profile; 2nd place: Statewide Arts Reporting

    2016: 1st Place: Community Human Interest Reporting; 1st Place: Community Environmental Reporting; 3rd Place: Community Personality Profile; 3rd Place: Statewide Human Interest Writing

    2015: 1st Place: Community Personality Profile; 2nd place: Community Social Issues Reporting

  • “Becoming Janos” selected for 2017 Best of Food Writing anthology

  • “Quitting Season” selected for 2016 Best of Food Writing anthology

  • "The Hunted" selected as a nonfiction winner for the Sun Dress Publications 2017 Best of the Net Anthology (Judge: Nicole Walker)

  • "The Hunted" nominated for a Pushcart Prize (2018)

  • "The Hunted" selected by Guernica as best memoir piece of 2017 (Memoir Monday collaboration)

  • Sundress Publication's 30 Most Transformative Essays of 2016

  • Nominated for Dzanc Books Best of the Web Anthology (2011) 

  • “Precarious Things” nominated for Pushcart Prize (2010)

  • “Precarious Things” won 3rd place in the 2008 Glimmer Train Press Very Short Fiction Contest