Authors

Jesse James DeConto is a songwriter and a veteran journalist. He worked as a staff writer and editor for newspapers in Ohio, New Hampshire and North Carolina. At The News & Observer in Raleigh, he wrote about immigration, entrepreneurship and environmental justice in green development and waste-facility siting. Some of his favorite stories involved quirky characters and a sense of place, even when covering front-page news. His freelance reporting has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Reason, E: The Environmental Magazine and dozens of other publications across the U.S. He’s written about agriculture for Fast Company and Paste; economic, racial, environmental and LGBTQ equity and Islamophobia for The Christian Century; consumer debt for The N&O and Prism; and intersectional activism for Religion News Service. As a Park Fellow at UNC-Chapel Hill, he did immersive reporting with the families of death-row inmates. In 2019, he won an Environmental Justice Reporting Award from the Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources and began publishing on climate justice with The Nation. He is author of the spiritual memoir This Littler Light: Some Thoughts on NOT Changing the World.