"[3] A graduate of Amherst College and a former Marshall Scholar,[1] he is also a professor and past director of the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of New York University.

[1][7][9] Conover finished high school in 1976[7] and went on to graduate summa cum laude with a bachelor's degree in anthropology from Amherst College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

[1][8] For one Torch article, he interviewed actor Lloyd Haynes by means of a fortuitous encounter in Aspen, Colorado during a family ski trip.

[12][7] His first paid journalism writing assignments were local stories on high school sports, real estate development, and the opening of an American Furniture Warehouse.

[3] Conover took a magazine internship at U.S. News & World Report during his junior year at Amherst College, which led him to think he "might have a place in that profession.

[7] This publicity enabled Conover to catch the attention of New York literary agent Sterling Lord, who had helped launch the career of Jack Kerouac.

[27] Conover's work for his next book—his 2011 The Routes of Man: Travels in the Paved World—focused on a central theme as observed across multiple continents: the role of roads and connectedness in shaping different aspects of human society.

"[32] Written in his signature style, it is a first-person account of life among people living off-grid in Colorado's expansive San Luis Valley.

[33] In this book he focuses on the approach to writing he has developed over three decades of his career, touching on the practical and ethical challenges of immersive reporting, and citing examples from his own work and that of other writers such as Sebastian Junger, Anne Fadiman, Susan Orlean, and Jon Krakauer.

[37][38] Conover expresses commitment to academic and journalistic rigor but also embraces some degree of experimentation in nonfiction writing, stating that "[l]iterature stays alive when it's open to new approaches.

"[7] In 2010, he told The Denver Post: When I was still in college, I started thinking about how the immersive research of ethnography might be combined with the topicality and accessibility of journalism.

[9] Conover's books of narrative nonfiction have typically been studies of little-known social groups and often provide some historical and sociological context.

[41][9] According to Kutztown University of Pennsylvania English professor Patrick Walters, Conover "navigates the fuzzy border between journalism and memoir, forging his own brand of immersion with a delicate balance of the two, while mostly letting the subjects speak for themselves.

This course will survey the history and current practice of empathetic writing, focusing on seminal readings but looking briefly at links to literature, psychology, neuroscience, and human rights.

[42][43]In his 2016 book Immersion: A Writer's Guide to Going Deep Conover discusses balancing the truth-seeking duties of a reporter with the more personalized narrative styles of memoir and empathetic journalism.

[4] He has taught undergraduate and graduate-level courses including "Ethnography for Journalists", "Longform Narrative", "Undercover Reporting", "The Journalism of Empathy", and "Varieties of the First Person".

The necessary tools are common to many nonfiction writers: the ability to listen, to ask good questions, to take notes, to find ways to tell a story and not simply file a report, to get to know people well enough that they become characters.

You need a hunger for different experiences...[9]Conover identifies narrative structure and effective use of digression as two of the more challenging concepts to teach students.