Loren Steffy has been a writer-at-large for Texas Monthly since 2013. In 2020, he founded Stoney Creek Publishing Group, an independent publisher that focuses on Texas narratives. He is also an executive producer for Rational Middle Media and a managing director for 30 Point Strategies, where he heads the 30 Point Press publishing imprint. Steffy is the author of five nonfiction books: Deconstructed: An Insider’s View of Illegal Immigration and the Building Trades (with Stan Marek); The Last Trial of T. Boone Pickens (with Chrysta Castañeda); George P. Mitchell: Fracking, Sustainability, and an Unorthodox Quest to Save the Planet; The Man Who Thought Like a Ship; and Drowning in Oil: BP and the Reckless Pursuit of Profit. His first novel, The Big Empty, was published in May 2021. He is the writer and producer of the six-episode narrative podcast Putin’s Oil Heist, and he was cohost of the award-winning Trial of the Century podcast with Tom Fox in 2021. Steffy is a former business columnist for the Houston Chronicle and previously was the Texas bureau chief and a senior writer for Bloomberg News. His award-winning writing has been published in newspapers and other publications worldwide. He has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Texas A&M. If he’s not writing or reading, he’s probably working on cars or puttering (yes, he has reached the age of puttering) around his property in Wimberley, where he lives with his wife, three dogs, and an ungrateful cat.