Meet Your Artifact Interviewers: Kevin Koczwara

Hometown: Milford, Massachusetts
Based in: Worcester, Massachusetts

What did you want to be when you grew up?

When I was 15 years old, my mother bought me a collection of W.B. Yeats poems. It was one of those crappy little books you can get for a few bucks in the checkout aisle at a bookstore. I devoured Yeats and then decided that I wanted to be a writer.

I was into sports before that. I really learned to write from reading Bob Ryan and Jackie MacMullan in the sports section of the Boston Globe.

What was your first big gig?

I graduated college in 2009 and there were no jobs. I remember watching the financial crisis on my television every day as I came home from class. I had some crappy community newspaper and alt-magazine jobs in the Worcester (Massachusetts) area, and since then I've been freelance writing for magazines.

I've covered everything from the daily police beat to daily sports up and down the East Coast, and then I’ve written about a woman who became a viral sensation for her moose-poop products, or a guy that literally buries everybody (including one of the Boston Marathon bombers) or the dairy business in Vermont and what it means as it disappears. Right now, I’m working on a profile of Tom Colicchio.

So what do you like most about interviewing for Artifact?

People. I just really like people. I always try to find people that are interesting and tell their stories. It's my M.O.

You have two young kids. Do you bring that background to interviews?

I think it really helps me understand time. There is a huge life change when you're in charge of someone else's life, not just your own. Your decisions change. I always thought I could understand being a parent, but did I know that for four weeks in a row I was gonna have to get in bed with my son every morning at 4:30 a.m.? No, I wouldn't ever have anticipated that.

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