Nick Gillespie received his M.A. in fiction in 1990. In 1996, Gillespie received his Ph.D. in English literature from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He is editor-in-chief of Reason, the libertarian monthly named one of "The 50 Best Magazines" three out of the past four years by the Chicago Tribune. Established in 1968 and a four-time finalist for National Magazine Awards, Reason has a print circulation of 40,000 and won the 2005 Western Publications Association "Maggie" Award for Best Political Magazine. Gillespie originally joined Reason's staff in 1993 as an assistant editor and ascended to the top slot in 2000. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Post, Slate, Salon, Time.com, Marketplace, and many other places. In 2004, he edited Choice: The Best of Reason, an anthology of the magazine's best articles. He is a frequent commentator on radio and television networks such as National Public Radio, CNBC, CNN, C-SPAN, Fox News, and MSNBC. He has also worked as a reporter for several New Jersey newspapers and as an editor at several Manhattan-based music, movie, and teen magazines. He is almost certainly the only journalist to have interviewed both Ozzy Osbourne and the 2002 Nobel laureate in economics, Vernon Smith.