Paul is an essay coach with decades of experience mentoring young writers and thinkers. As a prize-winning journalist of thirty-five years, he knows, firsthand, that everyone has a story and a voice in which to tell it. That voice isn’t always audible at first, but by paying close attention to the things that move and drive us, we begin to hear it clearly in ourselves. He thinks of fine writing as a muscle to be trained. Worked smartly, it gets stronger, leaner, and tauter.

The product of two prestigious writing programs—the Iowa Writers Workshop and the Yale School of Drama—Paul has taken up for the disempowered since he began at the Village Voice in the late Eighties. Right from the outset—his debut piece was the Pulitzer-nominated “Dead Boys”—he has made it his mission to seek justice for the wronged by telling their stories indelibly. Since moving to Rolling Stone in 1993, he has used his platform to confront inequities hiding in plain sight. He broke the NFL concussion scandal; the Walter Reed Army Medical Hospital scandal; exonerated the Philadelphia rapper Meek Mill, and helped free six men serving life in prison for crimes they didn’t commit. Five of his stories have spawned films or TV shows on Netflix, Amazon Prime, and elsewhere. Three more are in development at the moment.

As a writer who’s made an impact, Paul is mission-driven to share his craft with young minds. He believes in his bones that truth is power, and that thinking and speaking our deep convictions is how we make change happen.