Charles Bowden Additions

Charles "Chuck" Bowden (1945-2014), literary journalist, was born outside of Chicago, and was raised in Tucson, Arizona, where he lived until 2009. The author of over twenty books; contributing editor for GQ, Exquire, and Mother Jones; and contributor for Harper's Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, Aperture, and many other newspapers and magazines, including regional, national, and international publications; Bowden wrote and published widely and extensively on topics related to social justice and border issues, including the environment, drug crime, and violence on the border. He is perhaps best known for "While You Were Sleeping," Harper's Magazine, Dec. 1996, which broke the story of violent deaths of women in the border town of Juarez, Mexico in the U.S./ English speaking press.

After earning a Master's degree in American Intellectual History and completing doctoral work at the University of Wisconsin--Madison, Bowden returned to Tucson. In 1981, he landed a job as a reporter at the Tucson Citizen, where he reported on sex crimes and violence--jobs others refused to take. Bowden and his friend Dick Vonier founded and edited a weekly magazine, City Magazine, from 1986-1989, which covered local issues from a progressive point of view.

An avid hiker and outdoorsman--who claimed he applied for his first reporting job at the Tuscon Citizen in order to make money for a touring bicycle--Bowden also wrote extensively about the environment and championed causes such as the Sonoran Desert Park Project. Both Frog Mountain Blues (1987) and Blue Desert (1986), as well as and several photography books for which he wrote essays, including The Sonoran Desert (1992) and the Secret Forest (1993) came out of this connection with the land of the Southwest.

After "While You Were Sleeping," Bowden collaborated with street photographers who were covering crime scenes for daily Cuidad Juárez, Mexico papers for Juárez: Laboratory of Our Future (1998). During this time he made friends and contacts that helped him write on drugs and violence on the US/Mexico border for the next eighteen years, including Down by the River (2004), Some of the Dead are Still Breathing: Living in the Future (2009), Dreamland: the Way out of Juárez (2010), Murder City: Ciudad Juárez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields (2010), El Sicario: The Autobiography of a Mexican Assassin (2011), as well as numerous magazine articles.

Charles Bowden passed away August 30, 2014 in Las Cruces, New Mexico.