A Brief Biography
Ben Paynter has contributed to Wired, Details, and Best Life. After graduating from the University of Missouri - Columbia School of Journalism, he spent five years muckraking at The Pitch, a weekly newspaper in Kansas City, Missouri, before becoming a full-time freelance writer. He has been anthologized in Best American Sports Writing for saddling up next to cowboys struggling for machismo on the gay rodeo circuit. He has also earned a first-place Maggie Award for scouting a reality-TV star who spun his vice bust into a showbiz comeuppance, and has a first-place Hearst Award for tracking the reclusive author of Blue Highways, William Least Heat Moon, without his permission. A San Francisco transplant, Paynter currently lives in Kansas City, Missouri, a Midwestern cultural outpost that, like the writer himself, is certainly on the make.