Christina’s work has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, TheAtlantic.com, Oxford American, The Guardian,  Civil Eats, High Country News, Willamette Week, and Our State magazine, among other places.

Christina Cooke is associate editor at Civil Eats, a daily news source covering the American food system, and a freelance magazine writer who writes about people, place, cultural phenomenon, travel and outdoor adventure. She also teaches writing courses at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. In her work with Civil Eats, Cooke covers issues […]

Please get in touch if you have a story idea or would like to discuss writing or editing possibilities.  Email Christina at contact [at] christinacooke.com or use the form below. Look forward to hearing from you! Please complete the form below

Few days pass during which Wayne Pernu does not buy a book, or several hundred. During the summer, he hits as many as a hundred book sales per day in and around Portland, Oregon, cramming volumes into every inch of his car, stacking them on his lap if he runs out of space

“Do we have to stay on guard the entire weekend, or are we allowed to take breaks?” Donnie and I wanted to ask the ranger at the Tiller Ranger Station when we stopped in to inquire about the area. We’d rented the Pickett Butte Fire Lookout Tower, a 12×12 cabin on 40-foot stilts a few […]

Named America’s Most Tolerant City by The Daily Beast in 2012, Durham, North Carolina, has a strong sense of Pride. The city hosted the state’s first Pride parade back in 1981. Since then, the event has become the largest LGBT event in North Carolina and the five surrounding states. The 2014 parade took place this past Saturday. Revelers in feathers boas and rainbow tutus and […]

Christina Cooke is associate editor at the food policy site Civil Eats and a freelance writer who covers people, place, cultural phenomenon, travel and outdoor adventure for magazines and newspapers across the country. She also teaches writing at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. As a freelance writer, Cooke finds herself drawn to tell […]

The prosecution and defense painted very different pictures of police shooting victim Jonathan Ferrell during closing arguments on Tuesday in the voluntary manslaughter trial for the officer who killed him. Randall “Wes” Kerrick, a white Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officer shot and killed Ferrell, an unarmed black man, who wrecked his car in a suburban neighborhood east […]

Laura LaVoie and her partner, Matt, were living in a 2,700-square-foot house in Atlanta, complete with a movie theater, a library, and a bedroom exclusively for their cat, when they decided they needed a change. LaVoie was tired of working in an office nine hours a day to afford their mortgage, tired of the long […]

A veil of rain moved toward Donnie and me, then over, as we cranked our loaded touring bicycles along a two-lane road in Eastern Oregon. We had 10 miles to go before we reached our campsite, and we knew if we wanted to arrive before dark, we needed to keep pedaling, even if it meant […]

The advice is simple. To eliminate bedbugs, spread gunpowder on and around your bed, light it with a match, and keep the room closed for an hour or more. To compliment a lady, tell her that her legs are “as stately and firm as a marble pillar” and her breasts are “as soft and tender […]

My friend Xochil was shocked to see me when we met up at the Portland Art Museum last Saturday night, mostly because I was wearing underwear, cowboy boots, and nothing else. Then again, she was barely clothed herself. After years of giving in to excuses like “It’s raining,” “I’m too tired,” or “I don’t want […]

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An unfamiliar car pulled into the labor camp of a blueberry farm in Southern New Jersey last month, and the four year-round farmworkers on site stopped what they were doing, went inside, and locked themselves in their rooms. Afraid of being deported by federal immigration agents operating with increased authority since President Trump signed an […]