Patrik Jonsson

Staff Writer

Patrik Jonsson is the Atlanta-based correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor, covering the South -- both physically and philosophically -- from the paper's small basement bureau on Locust Street. Having emigrated to the United States from Sweden as a 10-year-old, Patrik began writing for American newspapers at age 16, covering high school sports for the Foster's Daily Democrat in Dover, NH. He parlayed that into a full-time writing gig a few years later at the Exeter News-Letter, where he covered town meetings, fires and car accidents. He also worked at the Portsmouth, NH, Press, Portsmouth, NH, Herald and the Deming, NM, Headlight before launching a freelance career that included sending dispatches to the Monitor and the Boston Globe from Raleigh, N.C., starting in 1999.

He was hired by the Monitor as a fulltime staff writer in 2005 after covering hurricane Katrina's immediate aftermath for the paper and moved to Atlanta. Among many other things, he writes about race, gun rights, tornadoes, extremist groups, hockey, and the tea party wing of the Republican Party, with the occasional weird animal story thrown in for internet posterity. Patrik lives in a small 1920s-era bungalow in Atlanta's Kirkwood neighborhood with his wife, Alice, and two children, Jake and Lena. When he's not in the bureau or taking care of the kids, you'll most likely find Patrik playing hood hockey -- an urban version of street hockey -- or chugging along some Southern waterway in his motorized canoe. He is probably the only Monitor correspondent with a commercial fishing license.