Long-form journalism, occasional essays, and two books. Reporting from forty-six states, mostly the small ones.
How four small freight-rail towns across the upper Midwest became the most unlikely beneficiaries of the green industrial policy of the late 2020s — and what they are choosing to do with it.
For thirty-six years, Sarah Brennan was the last full-time copy editor at the Cleveland Plain Dealer. She retired in November. A reporting essay on what was lost, what was preserved, and what we agreed to call "preserved" along the way.
A reporting essay from a small town in eastern Tennessee where the word has been deployed in twelve different ways over the past decade. A taxonomy.
320 pages. Fourteen essays. Selected as a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times. Currently in its 4th printing. A travel-and-reporting collection across the small parts of the American interior.
A 14-month reporting trip across nineteen counties in five states. Six interviews. One conclusion the headline writers refused to print.
Profile of Anna Hartwell, who has been making hand-drawn maps of decommissioned American highways since 1987. She is 78. She has 42 maps to go.
240 pages. Twelve essays. Debut book. Optioned for documentary in 2025.
An essay on the politics of monument removal in three Southern towns, written from the four months it took to remove them and the seven months that followed.
Eleanor Reyes is a journalist and author whose reporting on American small-town life appears in The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and The New York Times Magazine. She is the author of two books, both published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
She graduated from the Columbia Journalism School in 2012 and has been on staff or contract at The Atlantic since 2017. She splits her time between Brooklyn and a small farm in upstate New York. She is currently at work on her third book, due 2027.
I reply to every email I read. Allow up to 7 days.
eleanor@reyeswrites.com