Nick Reding (journalist)

Nick Reding (born in St. Louis, Missouri) is an American journalist.

He graduated from Northwestern University with a bachelor's degree in creative writing and English literature, and from New York University with a MFA in Creative Writing, where he was a University Fellow. He lives with his wife and son in Saint Louis.

His work has appeared in Harper's Bazaar, Food and Wine, Outside, Fast Company, and Details.

Awards

• 2010 The Hillman Prize
• 2009 Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize

Works

• The Last Cowboys at the End of the World, Crown Publishers, 2001, ISBN 978-0-609-60596-7
• Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2009, ISBN 978-1-59691-650-0

Reviews

Journalist Nick Reding stumbled into Gooding, Idaho, in 1999, to report a magazine story about ranching in the sparsely populated flatlands northwest of where Idaho, Nevada and Utah come together. It was there that Reding first encountered crystal methamphetamine, and he didn't just see it in one place. It was everywhere -- on the ranches, in the bars that overmatched police dared not enter and in the ranch bunkhouses where dealers dropped by like door-to-door salesmen.

Small-town residents, the story goes, are honest, hard-working, religiously observant and somehow just more American than the rest of America. In his persuasive new book, "Methland," journalist Nick Reding reveals the fallacies of this myth by showing how, over the past three decades, small-town America has been blighted by methamphetamine, which has taken root in -- and taken hold of -- its soul.

External links

• "An Interview With Nick Reding, Author of Methland", Huffington Post, July 20, 2009