Geoff Boucher is a feature writer for the Times who writes primarily on the pop music world but often veers off into film, television and other area of pop culture. Boucher has been writing for the Times since 1993 and for five years wrote extensively about crime with an emphasis on Latino street gangs, which lead to the publication in 1997 of his book, "Two Badges: The Lives of Mona Ruiz," a biography that details the life trajectory of a woman who went from gang member to battered wife to single parent to police officer. Boucher also covered local and county politics in Orange County and, during the 2000 Presidential campaign, he did a stint on the campaign trail that put him on Air Force Two with Al Gore and also on Dick Cheney's campaign plane. He has interviewed murderers, Nobel Prize winners, rock stars, Hall of Fame athletes and covered the Oscars, plane wrecks, federal trials and executions. Articles by Boucher were selected for publication in Best American Music Writing in both the 2004 and 2006 editions, the latter to be released this October. His work has also appeared in Smithsonian Magazine, Die Woche of Germany and the World Book encyclopedia as well as newspapers across the world. At the University of Florida, the Miami native was editor-in-chief of the Indendpent Florida Alligator, then the nation's largest student-run newspaper.