Christopher Fiorello








CLOSER TO HOME


a new book about how Americans find belonging


  

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From Brooklyn to Santa Barbara

Closer to Home explores the fragile state of belonging in America today through in-depth personal interviews conducted over a 3,800 mile cross-country walk.

In 2022 alone, three million Americans were displaced from their homes due to climate disasters. Hate crimes have risen to their highest levels in a decade, one in four Americans fears being attacked in their own neighborhood, and 71% of Americans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. 

In 2023, the American Immigration Council found that 74% of Americans report feeling like they don’t belong in their local communities. Given the rising tide of discomfort about everything from community to country, do any of us feel at home outside the four walls we shelter in?




The Route

June: Across the Brooklyn Bridge and along the Hudson River to the George Washington Bridge into New Jersey, then 100 miles west to link up with the Appalachian Trail in Pennsylvania
June - July: The AT for 260 miles southwest, into Maryland, til it links up with the American Discovery Trail, the only trail which runs east to west across the entire country
July - August: The ADT for 850 miles west to the Indiana border
August: 116 miles of Indiana country roads to reach the home of my dear friends' Sarah and Alex (and their new baby Frankie!) in Indianapolis
September: 300 miles of backroads across Indiana and southern Illinois to link back up with the ADT in St. Louis, Missouri
October - December: Back on the ADT for 990 miles, bisecting Missouri and Kansas—with a pitstop in Kansas City to see birth and chosen family—then a bit of southern Colorado before heading south
December -January: 268 miles walking away from the Rockies into New Mexican high desert, through Taos and into Santa Fe, mostly on empty two-lane roads 
January - March: 967 miles through reservations in New Mexico and Arizona, dropping down to Phoenix to avoid freezing at high altitudes, slinking between Joshua Tree and the Mojave, and approaching Santa Barbara from the pass between Los Padres and the Angeles National Forests
Writing




THE NEW YORKER


The Day Ram Dass Died
Online, The Weekend Essay
4/6/2024













THE GUARDIAN


Stuck in the mud, but the party hasn’t stopped:
a dispatch from Burning Man
Online & Print, pg. 4
9/4/2023



Christopher Fiorello is a writer and farmer based in Santa Barbara, California. He holds a BA in English and Sociology from Pomona College, where he studied with poet and Guggenheim Fellow Claudia Rankine. 

From 2020 to 2024, he managed a three-acre organic vegetable and fruit farm funded by the California Department of Aging to grow free organic produce for low-income seniors in Ventura County. 






    Reach him at christopherafiorello@gmail.com
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