The first sign that I had a future as a writer appeared in my kindergarten report card.
“Barbie always listens very carefully to the stories we read, and asks questions about why people do the things they do,” the teacher wrote, adding: “She’s very dexterous with the scissors.”
Scissors aside, my curiosity about stories and my compulsion to tell others what I had found out led me into journalism. After graduating from Williams College in 1981, I accepted the best and lowest-paying job that I was offered: as a copy kid at The Christian Science Monitor. There I covered economics, law, and political scandals – remember the Iran-Contra affair? – until, at 29, I was posted in Tokyo for the nightly television news program, World Monitor. I traveled throughout Asia for three years, covering, among other events, the rise of Burmese dissident Aung San Suu Kyi, who was imprisoned after the military junta lost the election.
After a one-year Knight Fellowship at Yale Law School, I joined National Public Radio in 1995. I covered Justice Department, including the impeachment and acquittal of President Bill Clinton, Florida’s disputed 2000 election, terrorism, crime, espionage, wrongful convictions, and the occasional serial killer. Coverage of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks earned me, along with other NPR reporters, the George Foster Peabody and Overseas Press Club awards.
In 2003, I switched to the religion beat at NPR and reported on the intersection of faith and politics, law, science, and culture. The awards for my religion reporting include the Gracie Award for Women in Radio and Television (twice), the National Headliner Award, and the Religion Newswriters Award.
In the summer of 2005, I traveled to Cambridge University (UK) on a Templeton-Cambridge Fellowship on Science and Religion, where my fellow journalists and I spent weeks questioning world-class scientists and theologians about faith and science. At Cambridge, I realized I must finally address my recurring question: Is there more than this? Fingerprints of God, which was published by Riverhead/Penguin Books in 2009, was my attempt to answer that question by delving into the emerging science of spirituality.
A few years later, that question presented itself in a slightly different form. At the age of 51, with my mother lying unconscious in the ICU after a stroke, I looked at my life and once again wondered: Is there more than this? I realized I was tottering on the edge of a midlife crisis. Life Reimagined (Riverhead, 2016) is my attempt to learn the secrets of a thriving midlife.
When I developed paralysis in my vocal cords in 2012, I found that losing my voice for days or weeks at a time – not to mention the chronic pain – made radio reporting problematic. I left the best job in the world as an NPR correspondent, and decided to put into practice the insights I had gleaned in researching Life Reimagined. I now write books full-time and am a contributing writer to The Atlantic. My search for a larger purpose led me to Ben Spencer and Bringing Ben Home.
I live in Washington, D.C., with my husband, Devin Hagerty, a college professor and international security expert, and our two pups, Patchett (after our favorite author, Ann) and Ravioli.
