Charles Bethea : Biography
      biography      
     
  As his paternal grandmother would proudly tell you, Charles Bethea is a fifth-generation Atlanta. He attended the city's Paideia School and then Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. At Brown, he studied poetry and wrote for the College Hill Independent newspaper. A semester as the paper's sports editor—during which he covered arm wrestling, jousting and scrabble tournaments—was the turning point in his writing life. (He failed as a nine-ball hustler around the same time.) Between his junior and senior years, Charles hiked the entirety of the 2,174-mile Appalachian Trail, which was tiring. During a stint as a porter and cook in New Hampshire's White Mountains after college Outside magazine offered him a job. This was fortunate, as he wasn't a great cook. Charles took the job and moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he's been an editor, writer and frequenter of reservation casinos ever since. Currently, he splits his time between the desert and Atlanta, where he's a contributing editor and columnist at Atlanta magazine. He also writes for Outside, Wired, Backpacker, Paste, and The New Yorker, among other publications.