Wells Tower's fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, Outside, The Paris Review, McSweeney's, The Washington Post Magazine and elsewhere. The recipient of two Pushcart Prizes, and the Plimpton Discovery Prize from The Paris Review, Tower is the author of "Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned," a collection of short fiction to be published in March 2009 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. He lives in North Carolina.

Meltdown
Funny story: My old man gets cancer, survives, vows thenceforth to see as much of the world as he can, drags me all over creation, and leaves mind-bending mishaps in his wake. Our next mission? Tour rapidly defrosting Iceland and Greenland. Bad idea? You could say that.

Best Towns: New Orleans
You say you want a reconstruction? In the Big Easy, it's the regular folks, with help from a host of smart non-profits, who are resurrecting the city.

Love in the Ruins
A year after Katrina crashed the Big Easy's party, former local WELLS TOWER returned to check up on New Orleans's most beloved outdoor escape, the path on top of the Mississippi River levee. But, as he found, biking the high lonesome trail is no longer such an easy thing.

The Thing with Feathers
Is it a bird or a haunting memory? Wells Tower tracks an uncertain resurrection in the big woods of Arkansas.

Cannery Woe
A salmon butchery goes from bloody routine to living hell.