Michael finkel writer for gq biography death

In a journal I kept at age 10, I noted that I wanted to be a writer when I grew up. In the line of reportorial duty, I skied all over the world, including in Iran and China, and on the glaciers of Mount Kilimanjaro.

True story book

I also wrote about odd sports for Sports Illustrated and traveled widely for National Geographic Adventure— crossing the Sahara desert with migrant workers; documenting the impact of animal poachers in the Central African Republic; attempting, with my sister, to climb Cho Oyu, the sixth highest mountain in the world. While traveling in Haiti, I witnessed the desperate measures people took to escape the punishing economic circumstances there.

Some built tiny boats of scrap wood and recycled nails, and attempted to sail across hundreds of miles of open water to try and start a new life in America. I was given an assignment by The New York Times Magazine to document one of these voyages, and along with photographer Chris Anderson and 44 Haitian migrants, we sailed off. The trip nearly ended in disaster—we were rescued at sea by the U.

Coast Guard, luckily, just as we were about to run aground on a coral reef. Then, working for The New York Times Magazine , I covered conflicts in Israel and Afghanistan, investigated the international black market for human organs, looked into a strange murder in Kentucky, and spent time getting to know a former Taliban soldier. Such fictionalization is against the rules of journalism, and when the story was published an aid agency questioned my reporting, and after I confessed my actions to my editors at the Times , I was fired.

Then came a twist so bizarre and unexpected that it practically defies belief, yet is completely true.