William Ecenbarger

Before I became a full-time free lance writer in 1981, I was a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, and part of an Inquirer team that won the 1980 Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Three Mile Island nuclear accident. In addition, I received the George Polk Award for a series of articles outlining abuses in the Pennsylvania Legislature. I am a former contributing editor for Reader’s Digest and still write regularly for its international editions. I am the author of four books: Walkin’ the Line (M. Evans 2001), a travel-history about the Mason-Dixon Line; Glory by the Wayside: The Old Churches of Hawaii (Passage Press 2008), a photo-essay book; Kids for Cash (The New Press 2012), an account of a judicial scandal in Pennsylvania, and Pennsylvania Stories. Well-Told (Temple University Press 2016), a collection of 12 long-form magazine articles. The New York Times called Kids for Cash “a harrowing tale, lucidly told by a journalist with a great eye for detail.”
I am the co-author of two books--Catching Lightning in a Bottle: How Merrill Lynch Revolutionized the Financial World (Wiley & Sons 2013), a history of Merrill Lynch, and Making Ideas Matter (University of Pennsylvania 2013), a primer on mobilizing political power.
In addition, I have written more than 300 travel articles for magazines and major newspapers, and won 13 individual awards from the Society of American Travel Writers; in 1996 the SATW named me “Lowell Thomas Travel Writer of the Year.” I live in Hershey, Pa.