Charles Bowden

Biography

Charles Bowden is a Pulitzer Prize nominee, and winner of a Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction and the Sidney Hillman Foundation Award. A contributing editor for GQ, his writing has appeared in many magazines including Harper’s, Mother Jones, National Geographic, and Esquire. His essay “The Crazy Place” is an excerpt from his forthcoming book Murder City: Lessons of the Dead in Mexico. His previous books include Some of the Dead are Still Breathing: Living in the Future; A Shadow in the City: Confessions of an Undercover Drug Warrior; Down by the River: Drugs, Money, Murder and Family; Blues for Cannibals; and Blood Orchid: An Unnatural History of America.

See Work

Fall 2009

The Crazy Place

By Charles Bowden

In Juárez, people vanish. They leave a bar with the authorities and are never seen again. They leave their homes on an errand and never return. They go to a meeting and never come back. They are waiting at a bus stop and never arrive at...