Steven Petrow is an award-winning journalist and book author who is best known for his Washington Post and New York Times essays on civility and manners, aging and cancer. He was recently named as an opinion columnist for the USA TODAY Network. His work has been published in TIME, The Atlantic, Salon, the Daily Beast, the Los Angeles Times and The Advocate. You’re likely to hear Petrow when you turn on NPR’s “All Things Considered Weekend,” or one of your favorite (or least favorite) TV networks (MSNBC, PBS, CBS, Fox and CNN). Petrow is the recipient of numerous awards and grants, including those from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Smithsonian Institution, the Ucross Foundation, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the National Press Foundation. In 2017, he became the named sponsor of the Petrow LGBTQ Fellowship at the VCCA, a prize that is awarded annually. Petrow, with three degrees from Duke University and the University of California, Berkeley, lives in Hillsborough, N.C.
Kirk Ross is a longtime North Carolina journalist based in Chapel Hill and the lead legislative reporter for Coastal Review Online. His reporting and opinion pieces have appeared in multiple publications, including the Independent Weekly, in Durham. He is also the founder of The Carolina Mercury, a North Carolina politics and news website. [kmr@rossalmanac.com]
