





Nancy Rommelmann's work appears in the LA Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, Reason, and other publications.

TO THE BRIDGE, A True Story of Motherhood and Murder (Little A, July 2018)
“Rommelmann's investigation manages to be both a tonic meditation on the limits of knowledge and a bracing defense of its pursuit.” - Matt Welch, Reason Best of 2018
“In TO THE BRIDGE, Nancy Rommelmann takes what many consider the most unforgivable of crimes—a mother set on murdering her own children—and delivers something thoughtful and provocative: a deeply reported, sensitively told, all-too-relevant tragedy of addiction and codependency, toxic masculinity, and capricious justice. You won’t be able to look away—nor should any of us.” - Robert Kolker, author of LOST GIRLS
“How do you understand the not understandable and forgive the unforgivable? So asks one of the characters in this clear-eyed investigation into something we all turn away from. TO THE BRIDGE is tour-de-force of both journalism and compassion, in the lineage of such masterpieces In Cold Blood and The Executioner’s Song. Word by word, sentence by sentence, Rommelmann’s writing is that good. And so is her heart.” - Nick Flynn, author of ANOTHER BULLSHIT NIGHT IN SUCK CITY
"Unrelenting... A painstaking and meticulous exploration of all the facts and conjectures surrounding a disturbing case." - Kirkus Reviews
"Rommelmann employs compassion and emotional honesty in her investigation to try to comprehend the motivations behind the crime and its aftermath." - Publishers Weekly
"What emerges from [TO THE BRIDGE's] chorus of voices and perspectives, among them Rommelmann’s own as both mother and writer, is a story of addiction, abuse, neglect, alcoholism, deceit, and systemic failure. It’s an emotionally honest, meticulous examination of a confluence of circumstances that culminated in a deadly act, and the complicity of our own city and culture in its aftermath." - Portland Monthly
[TO THE BRIDGE] is a remarkable work: not a whodunit but an inquiry into why. Rommelmann doesn't find an easy solution, but neither does she settle for platitudes about the unknowability of the human heart. - Willamette Week
Currently:
What happens when you find out the mother you never met has thrown siblings you didn’t know you had off a bridge — and there’s a book coming out about it? New from me at Medium.com
A guide to surviving America’s newest ritual: Destruction by Internet mob. If you do not think this can happen to you, you have not been paying attention. Read the whole thing over at Reason. Here’s Rule #1…
I wrote about the coordinated assault on my husband’s business, Ristretto Roasters, for Quillette. Super-fun, right? Nope!
Writing for The New Yorker, Ian Parker documents one of the best examples I have seen of the ravenous of the charming sociopath, all the earmarks ablaze - fake illnesses, unstoppable lying, childhood abuse, the knives that come out if you cross him/her. Right in my wheelhouse and a must-read. Read the story here.
In #MeNeither Show, episode 5, Shame: Take It or Leave It, Leah McSweeney and I discuss some of the people caught/not caught in shame’s dragnet this week: Jeff Bezos, the leadership of Southern Baptist Convention, and Jill Abramson.
New from me at Reason: A Portland City Council meeting on February 8 passed a resolution aimed at banning hate groups. How these groups are to be identified was not on the agenda…
In #MeNeither, episode 4, OUTRAGEOUS, Leah McSweeney and I discuss outrage culture, its deleterious effect on journalism (et al), why cultural patronization is a garbage thing to do, and why my husband's business Ristretto Roasters is under attack for what Leah and I say here. Tune in!
On the Reason podcast: Journalists Nancy Rommelmann and Leah McSweeney make no apologies for critiquing what they've called the "toxic femininity" of Asia Argento and the anti-Semitism of some of the leaders of this weekend's Women's March in Washington, D.C. Tune in here.
In episode 3 of #MeNeither, Leah McSweeney and I discuss the monsters who prey on us and the ones we build for prey. Check it out here
Title does not have anything to do with a store we passed yesterday in the Washington somethingorother mall called LOVESAC…
This podcast was so much fun, I wondered whether the final cut would include anything besides hosts Eric Beetner, S.W. Lauden and I laughing…
… This is where I will be reading Saturday at 12:45, @PDXArtMuseum, as part of #PDXBookFest. They placed me next to the painting at left (“Mother and Child”). We saw yesterday, during a little recon, what was on the right…
I loved doing the Stacks podcast (twice!) more than I can say. This week, Traci and I talk about John Carreyrou’s triumphant “Bad Blood,” my favorite nonfiction book of the year. Tune in wherever you get your podcasts.
Need (and will!) get a better about posting. Here is a Reason piece from late August, about Argento, Laura Albert, Rose McGowan, Tony Bourdain, and the #MeToo climate du jour, which my editor smartly sub-heded, "A tale of fame, fallacy, and the perils of good intentions."
Few things I enjoy more than spending time with the brilliant/badass people from Reason, and super-stoked to have had the chance to podcast with Katherine Mangu-Ward, editor-in-chief of Reason Magazine, about “To the Bridge," the state of journalism, and why “the tit pic is not the problem.”
Listen to the whole thing here
This Wednesday 7/25. And it's at a bar so, #twobirdsonestone