“Abe Streep’s reporting bursts with compassion and urgency as he lifts up stories of often-overlooked communities in the American West, such as a Syrian refugee family building a new life in Montana, or a Native American high-school basketball team grappling with a flurry of suicides in its community. With great sensitivity, his work reveals the rich tapestry of cultures and lives that intersect in a part of the country far too often characterized by the stereotypes of an urban-rural divide.”

2019 Judging Panel

Abe Streep is a journalist based in New Mexico. A contributing editor at Outside and a contributing writer at The California Sunday Magazine, he has also written for The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, WIRED, The Atavist, The New Republic, and other publications.

He has reported on high-school basketball in Montana, minor league baseball in New Mexico, refugee resettlement, coal miners in Wyoming, rodeo, conflicts over America’s public lands, and emergency medicine along the U.S.-Mexico border. His writing has been noted in Best American Essays, Best American Sports Writing and Best American Science and Nature Writing. He is expanding his article from The New York Times Magazine about the Arlee Warriors basketball team into a book for Celadon Books.