Welcome. I'm a 34-year-old journalist in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I write about science, sports, and culture. My work has appeared in GQ, Wired, Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, Philadelphia, The Atlantic, Slate, Kill Screen, The Penn Stater, Wharton Magazine, Etiqueta Negra, and Deadspin. I also have a piece in the 2011 edition of The Best American Sports Writing, an anthology edited by Jane Leavy and Glenn Stout.
In 2006, I spent a year reporting on eating contests and wrote a book called Horsemen of the Esophagus. I'm now working on my second book, about futuristic cars and the people who make them, for Crown/Random House. It's called Genius is Not a Plan, and it will be published in March 2013.
You should follow me on Twitter. And if you'd like to keep up with my projects via email, please subscribe to my (extremely infrequent) newsletter below. I plan on sending out three or four quick messages per year, no more.
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With just a handful of posts about a hypothetical time travel scenario, James Erwin went from web commenter to professional screenwriter. (Wired, April 2012; photo by Sam Comen)
The world's first gangster rapper looks at 50. (Philadelphia, April 2012)
Learning to appreciate the very big business, and very particular charms, of peddling discarded metal. (New York Times Magazine, August 14, 2011)
The Chain World videogame was supposed to be a religion, not a holy war. (Wired, August 2011; photo by Jason Pietra)
Teen mathletes do battle at the Algorithm Olympics, the world's most prestigious youth coding competition. (Wired, December 2010)
(GQ.com, January 2011)
A profile of Chris Christie, the smash-mouth governor of New Jersey and probable GOP candidate for President. (Philadelphia, December 2010)
A short piece on Tom Sullivan, the Lumber Liquidators CEO who's building fueling stations for hydrogen cars. (The Atlantic, November 2010)
The tale of a Philadelphia slumlord and the public officials who loved him. (Philadelphia, October 2010) (REACTION TO THIS STORY: 1, 2, 3)
A hunting arcade challenges boundaries with bullets. (Kill Screen, Issue #1, Spring 2010)
(Slate, June 2010)
(Wired Autotopia, September 2010)
The real meaning of the quarterback's pro-life Super Bowl ad. (Slate, January 28, 2010)
Was it only last season that Marvin Harrison was still catching TD passes for Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts? Now, in the wake of a brazen but mysterious Philadelphia gunfight -- many details of which are reported here for the first time -- the man who holds the NFL record for most receptions in a season may yet find himself with a permanent record of a different sort. (GQ, February 2010)
MORE MARVIN COVERAGE: This was a wild piece with an equally wild afterlife -- as soon as it was posted on GQ.com it started getting picked up by newspapers, blogs, and talk radio. The next day, the newly sworn Philly D.A. said he was taking a fresh look at the Harrison case in large part because of the revelations in the GQ story. Later I typed up some deleted scenes at Deadspin -- basically a notebook dump of some stuff I couldn't fit into the print piece. There's more coverage of the story and of Marvin at Deadspin, Yahoo Sports, USA Today's Game On blog, Newsweek's Tumblr, Pro Football Talk, The New York Times, Philebrity, Mediaite, Technorati Sports, National Football Post, Bleacher Report, OntheDL podcast with Dan Levy, and Slate's sports podcast "Hang Up and Listen."
Former Navy admiral and professional hardass Joe Sestak tries to unseat Arlen Specter in the PA Senate race. (Philadelphia, January 2010)
For half a century, the Republican Party has been a joke in Philadelphia. But now a few upstarts have a radical idea: Let's try to get Republican candidates elected! (Philadelphia, October 2009)
Profile of Tim Tebow, Heisman-winning quarterback for the University of Florida football Gators. (GQ, September 2009)
Jason Rohrer's solitary and stubborn quest for a future in which pixels and code and computers will make you cry and feel and love. (Esquire, December 2008; Spanish translation in Etiqueta Negra, October 2009)
Over the course of a century, Wolf Block grew into one of Philadelphia's most famous law firms. So what caused its sudden collapse in March? (Philadelphia, June 2009)
Profile of vaccine advocate Dr. Paul Offit. (Philadelphia, June 2009)
A road trip across the Eastern Bloc with dozens of mustachioed Hungarians, a few jolly Czechs, two Slovenians, four Russians, three gung-ho dudes from the U.S. Department of Energy, and enough highly enriched uranium to destroy a city. (The Penn Stater, January/February 2009)
The strange allure of making your own fonts (Slate, June 2008)
Profile of Vova Galchenko, the best young juggler in the world. (NY Times Play magazine, June 2008)
The last doo-wop deejay. (Philadelphia, May 2008)
The fight to eradicate tuberculosis. (Esquire, December 2007)
Among the super-gluttons, on the front lines of competitive eating. (The Atlantic, May 2006)
Profile of the most flamboyant lawyer in boxing. (Philadelphia, February 2006)
Profile of Brian Tierney, the self-made adman who bought the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Daily News. (Philadelphia, April 2007)
contact: jfagone at gmail dot com