Josiah Hesse

About

In his decade-long career as a professional journalist (Vice, The Guardian, Politico, Esquire) Josiah Hesse has strived to peek behind the curtain of polite society, uncovering the peccadillos of human behavior that often go unreported. Completely self-educated, Hesse left a life of religious extremism in rural Iowa and relocated to Denver, Colorado, where he built a journalism career reporting on the arts, crime and newly legalized marijuana for local outlets like Westword, Colorado Public Radio and The Denver Post. His thoughtful, well-rounded reporting on Colorado’s pioneering marijuana industry caught the attention of editors at Vice Media, which was then exploding in popularity due to their HBO series and dominance of the millennial news market. There he wrote over 70 articles in a few short years, exploring fitness subcultures, secret animal abuse, new marijuana products, and plenty of bizarre personal confessions. When not writing long-form pieces for general audiences, Hesse was often reporting on breaking marijuana news for industry insiders and enthusiasts, covering politics, economics and culture for cannabis outlets like Ganjapreneur, High Times, Big Buds, The Fix, The Cannabist, The Chronic, and many more. When an evangelical extremist killed three hostages during a police standoff in a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood, Hesse was tapped by one of the oldest and most respected newspapers in the world, The Guardian, to provide round the clock coverage for three days straight. Learning of his background in the Christian right, Guardian editors asked him to pen a long-form essay about his life in Pentecostal Iowa: "Apocalyptic upbringing: how I recovered from my terrifying evangelical childhood. This quickly became one of the most popular stories in the history of their website, and launched a relationship that would span more than 30 stories. Like all international outlets, Guardian editors had a terrific interest in Colorado’s marijuana industry (a world most professional journalists were wildly ignorant of) which led Hesse to explore the unintended consequences of legalization, the new ancillary industries of legal weed and, of course, the athletes who love to get high and workout. Today, Hesse is senior editor of Suspect Press magazine, an arts and literature quarterly out of Denver, Colorado. He was also tapped to help guide the narrative team of Meow Wolf, the billion-dollar multi-media operation’s $60 million Denver installment.