Stephen Kurczy via giant steps through a matrix based in the phenomenon placing most of the 7.8 billion of us within 6 or fewer degrees — steps — of each other...
- Steps from Stephen Kurczy:
I'LL TAKE YOU THERE! ▶
'mātriks / "source" / from "mater", Latin for "mother". We're real mothers for ya!
I'LL TAKE YOU THERE! ▶
- Steps forward by: The Matrix via ↴
Who I Am & Where I Live
- Name: Stephen Kurczy
- City: At large, Connecticut
- Country: United States
Current News
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What's Up?
THE QUIET ZONE
Due from HarperCollins imprint Dey Street Books in 2021, this narrative nonfiction book of immersion journalism explores the pervasive role of technology in our lives through my journey into a mysterious Appalachian town where cell service is outlawed.
My Life & Work
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Bio:
I’m a journalist.
Over the past 15 years I’ve reported around the world, from the muddy jungles of Cambodia to the dense rainforest of Brazil, with credits in The Christian Science Monitor, The Economist, The New Yorker, and elsewhere.
I took a break from deadlines in 2016-2017 to participate in the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship in Economics and Business Journalism at Columbia University, where I earned my M.S. from the Graduate School of Journalism. Through the fellowship, I began a book of narrative nonfiction about a mysterious area of Appalachia where cell service is outlawed. The book is due out from HarperCollins imprint Dey Street Books in 2021.
Reporting has allowed me to do lots of traveling and exploring, and one of my favorite trips was a three-week mountaineering expedition in 2014 to the summit of Aconcagua, tallest peak in the Western Hemisphere, which I wrote about for The New Yorker.
Contact Information
- Email: kurczy (at) gmail (dot) com
- Telephone: 860-556-3887
My Media & Markets
- ▶ Book Purchases: http://www.amazon.com/Quiet-Zone-Stephen-Kurczy-ebook/dp/B087CKW756
- ▶ Twitter: stephenkurczy
- ▶ Website: http://www.stephenkurczy.com
- ▶ Blog: http://www.stephenkurczy.com/blog/
- ▶ YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/kurczy
- ▶ Articles: http://www.stephenkurczy.com/articles/
More
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Quotes, Notes & Etc.
WORK
Freelance Writer: 2009–Present
Currently contributing to The New York Times and other publications as freelancer. I also write regular feature stories for various Columbia University publications.
From 2013 to 2016, I was based in Brazil and contributed regularly to Americas Quarterly, the Christian Science Monitor, Fusion, Mergermarket, The New Yorker, Smithsonian magazine, VICE, and Zócalo Public Square. I reported on Brazilian business and economics, environment and development, national politics and foreign relations, culture and mega-events, including the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Rio Olympics.
From 2008 to 2009, I was based in Phnom Penh and contributed regularly to The Economist, the Far Eastern Economic Review, the Christian Science Monitor, GlobalPost, the National, and Reuters. Reporting highlights included an investigation for The Economist about a wage-kickbacks scheme within the Khmer Rouge Tribunal.
Adjunct Lecturer at The King’s College, New York, Fall 2019–Present
I teach a 3-credit core journalism course on media law and ethics.
Contributing Editor at Appalachia Journal, Boston: Spring 2019–Present
As a committee member of America’s longest-running journal of mountaineering and conservation, I contribute feature stories and review books on rock climbing and big mountains.
Editor and Writer at Columbia University, New York: April 2018–April 2019
From May 2018 to April 2019, I was editor of the Business School’s thought-leadership publication Ideas at Work.
Reporter at the Financial Times Group, New York: June 2011–July 2013
For the FT Group’s news service Debtwire, I reported on distressed debt situations and broke news on corporate mergers, acquisitions, restructurings, and bankruptcies.
Desk Editor at The Christian Science Monitor, Boston: January 2010–May 2011
For the Monitor’s world desk, I reported on international affairs and edited contributions from a team of global correspondents, which included assigning pitches and shepherding stories.
Royal University of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, 2009
I taught a 3-credit news reporting class at Cambodia’s top journalism school.
Southeast Asia Correspondent, Phnom Penh, Cambodia: December 2007–December 2009
I was an associate editor at The Cambodia Daily, the nation’s oldest English newspaper. My features included reports from the Thai-Cambodia border war and profiles of Khmer Rouge war criminals.
I was also a contributor and investigative reporter for The Economist, Far Eastern Economic Review, GlobalPost, The National, Reuters, Asia Times Online, and The Christian Science Monitor.
Legal Reporter at American Lawyer Media, New York: January 2007–December 2007
I wrote up to a dozen reports a week summarizing multimillion-dollar court cases nationwide.
Town Reporter at The Day, New London, Connecticut: June 2005–September 2006
I covered politics, business, and culture for the weekly edition of this New England Newspaper of the Year.
AWARDS
2017 Columbia University: $2,500 research grant for an outstanding book-writing student.
2017 Knight-Bagehot Fellowship WERT Essay Contest: First place $2,000 prize.
2007 Connecticut Society of Professional Journalists: Second place for best “in-depth series.”
2006 New England Press Association: First place for best “social issues feature story.”
EDUCATION
Columbia University Knight-Bagehot Fellow in Business and Economics Journalism, 2016-2017
Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, M.S.
Calvin College, B.A. in Philosophy.
Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Study Abroad Fall 2004
Language: Coursework and experience in Hungarian, Khmer, Portuguese, Spanish
Other experience: Visited 35 countries across four continents; bicycled across America (2004); ran five marathons from 2011 to 2012, with P.R. of 2:30; climbed tallest peak in Western Hemisphere, Mt. Aconcagua (2014).
The world's artistry via giant steps through a matrix based in the phenomenon placing most of the 7.8 billion of us within 6 or fewer degrees — steps — of each other ...
... a project conceived and built in the fertile, fecund and atavistic ground zero of Bahia, Brazil initially for the discoverability of this singular region's dispossessed genius.
All explained in the window immediately below. Followed — beneath this window — by scores of magnificent artists, each leading to myriads more artists/categories. Inside this window also may be found our Brazilian record store radio, named by British journal The Guardian as one of 10 of the Best Radio Stations Around the World!
IF YOU CAN'T STAND THE HEAT
Brazil is not a European nation. It's not a North American nation. It's not an East Asian nation. It straddles -- jungle and desert and dense urban centers -- both the equator and the Tropic of Capricorn. It absorbed over ten times the number of African slaves taken to the United States of America, and much of its aboriginal population was absorbed into the general population-at-large. Its people have lived under oligarchy, plutocracy, dictatorships and massive corruption, with elements of these still strongly entrenched today.
But!
Brazil has buzz...not the shallow buzz of a fashionable moment...but the deep buzz of a population which in spite of -- or perhaps because of -- the tough slog through life they've been allotted by humanity's dregs-in-fine-linen, have chosen not to simply pull themselves along but to lift their voices in song and their bodies in dance...to eat well and converse well and much and to wring the joy out of the day-to-day happenings and small pleasures of life which are so often set aside or ignored in the European, North American, and East Asian nations.
For this Brazil has a genius perhaps unparalleled in all other countries and societies, a genius which thrives alongside peeling paint and holes in the streets and roads, under bad organization by the powers-that-be, both civil and governmental, under a constant rain of societal indignities...
Which is all to say that if you don't know Brazil and you're expecting any semblance of order, progress and light, you will certainly find the light! And the buzz of a people who for generations have responded to privation at many different levels by somehow rising above it all.
Raimundo Sodré, in a conversation ranging through New Orleans and Harlem and the South Side of Chicago ... and Appalachia and Irish villages and Russian shtetls and the unofficial symbol of Brazil's Bahian-born national music (the pandeiro) almost certainly having arrived in Brazil in the hands of Sephardic Jews (including conversos) fleeing the Inquisition, once remarked: "Where there's misery, there's music!"
A pandeirista on the roof. And it's not just music. And it's not just Brazil.
