Journalist. Writer. Storyteller.

Memphis native. Former newspaper columnist and podcast host. News journalist at the University of West Alabama. University of Memphis and Jacksonville State University graduate. Cardinals fan.

I write about politics and poverty, history and culture, race and equality and humanity in the Deep South. Splendid tales are everywhere: in 100-year-old basements, in City Council meetings, in church pews, in dusty archives and computer databases, in aging chapels on abandoned military bases, on downtown rooftops, and, as the photo illustrates, atop soaring bell towers of antebellum churches. Everyone has a story to tell, fanciful or polite. Others aren't as pleasant, the dark stories of political malfeasance and humanity's worst traits. It's journalists' duty to tell them all -- accurately, fairly and without fear.

Searching in the woods for remnants of Anniston's Barber Memorial Seminary, a long-shuttered African-American school funded by Northern philanthropists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. (Photo/Steve Gross)
Interviewing City of Anniston workers who are in charge of the city's most prominent flag that's displayed atop Watermark Tower. (Photo/Steve Gross)
Taking notes in the doorway of an ammunition igloo at an abandoned World War II-era Army depot in Talladega County, Ala. (Photo/Bill Wilson)
Documenting the relocation of a World War II-era soldiers chapel at the former Fort McClellan, Ala. (Photo/Steve Gross)
On assignment to write about high school mascots -- first-person, of course. (Photo/Kirsten Fiscus)
Atop a scaffold with a restorer who was trying to save Anniston's Spirit of the American Doughboy statue.

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