[3][5] McGowan met her husband, Don Looney, in 1991, when she decided to hike the entire Appalachian Trail after one of many cancer treatments; they married in 1997.
[10][12] That year, after hearing the good news that the cancer was gone, she decided to go to Springer Mountain and the hike the entire Appalachian Trail.
[6] McGowan returned to Wisconsin and in the mid 1990s, she worked for 5 years as a reporter for The Times Journal, covering government and writing feature articles.
"[11] McGowan began her bicycle trip from Astoria, Oregon, to the Atlantic Ocean in Virginia, along the TransAmerica Trail, a 4,250-mile ride.
In the cover letter for entry to the prize, dilbit is described as "a thick Canadian hydrocarbon called bitumen that is diluted with liquid chemicals so that it can flow through pipes."
[23] According to the cover letter, in the entry for the prize, the investigations stemmed from research that Lisa Song had originally began, and McGowan and Hasemyer joined in shortly after.
[4] In 2013, after winning the pulitzer prize, she left InsideClimate News to write her book on her experience with cancer titled, Outpedaling the Big C: My Healing Cycle Across America, which was published in 2020.