I am a San Francisco-based sports reporter for The New York Times and the author of "Boy on Ice: The Life and Death of Derek Boogaard." A reporter without a beat, I write about a little bit of everything, from the Olympics (many times) to dog-grooming contests (once). The quest is to write stories that surprise readers, usually nibbling in the shadows of the sports world. I received the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing for "Snow Fall," a story about a deadly avalanche in Washington, and was a finalist for the prize the year before for a series about hockey enforcer Derek Boogaard, the subject of my first book, released in 2014. Raised in Golden, Colo., a one-time manager for Costco, I received a Master's degree in Journalism from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1996. I worked for The Gazette in Colorado Springs for several years, then became the sports columnist at the Fresno Bee before being hired by The New York Times in 2005.