i tell stories.
I am a nonfiction storyteller, editor and graphic designer, in that order. I'm a co-founder of the bilingual (español/English) nonprofit news site Voices of Monterey Bay and associate editor at The Imprint.
I'm also an audio documentarian and editorial designer. I work remotely in a tricked-out minivan camper I converted myself.
After many years reporting on youth violence, injustice and incarceration — and then the greedy forces behind the destruction of local news — life is pulling me toward solutions. Kindness. Hope.
While I work on my next book (hint: elders, vans, dogs and Guinea pigs are involved), you can continue to check out my audio stories at Gray Area Productions and my writing at Voices of Monterey Bay.
Scroll if you'd like to see and hear samples of what I do.
audio documentaries
Together with Mara J. Reynolds, I'm half of the auntie-and-niece team behind Gray Area: A show about justice and redemption, where we make documentaries for your ears. Gray Area is co-published with Voices of Monterey Bay. Art by Mara.
Gray Area | Season 3: ELDERS
This season we’re hearing from elder survivors of systemic injustice and historical trauma who are showing new generations how to address and prevent those kinds of harm.
Episode 1, the one-hour audio documentary Uncle John, was produced as a project for the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s 2024 California Health Equity Fellowship in collaboration with The Imprint.
This is an audio story. Please turn on the player for the full experience.
Gray Area | Season 2: AFTER LIFE
Four years in the making, this 10-part audio documentary followed one man with a life sentence who got an unexpected second chance at life. But before he came home, Gilbert Bao helped revolutionize the whole concept of rehabilitation in the state’s prisons. He and other incarcerated men in Soledad’s Correctional Training Facility took on the work of changing themselves — and with them, an entire prison system.
This is an audio story. Please turn on the player for the full experience.
After Life won the Institute for Nonprofit News’ 2023 Breaking Barriers Award and was a finalist for the 2023 Media for a Just Society awards.
writing
Over several decades as an investigative journalist, beat reporter and executive editor, my work has been published and broadcast in numerous national, international and local news outlets.
I also like writing features and personal essays. Here are three of them.
Road Atlas |
Women healing trauma in the nomad west
I was in the desert north of Quartzsite, Arizona, and it was January 2022.
This grassless prairie of pure rocks would be home for the next two weeks, when the government would require us to move along to another spot at least 20-something miles away.
The Fire In Our Minds |
Taking in family during the Sonoma wildfires
What terrified me was the thought of spending so much time with the battlefield that was my aunt’s mind.
She was evacuating from a firestorm, but where could I escape to?
Howl |
Ode to a pandemic ritual
This is an audio story. Please turn on the player for the full experience. Feel free to enjoy the full howl as you browse this site — it will play for a minute and half.
I’ll hear one or two at first, then more voices, sorrowful cries that wail like saxophones, others barking and baying, voices both human and canine. Then the banging of pans, conch shell horns blaring, the jangling of wind chimes. Frogs and blue jays join in. It builds to a crescendo of joyous cacophony that can last as long as five minutes.
book(s)
I write narrative nonfiction, a genre in which subjects are deeply reported but flow like a novel. Because investigative journalism is storytelling — just storytelling with facts.
Blood in the Fields |
Blood in the Fields follows the lives of young people in California's “Steinbeck Country” as they search for some semblance of family — a quest that leads to the tragic heart of youth violence, even in a geography as idyllic as the Salinas Valley.
The book became a catalyst that led me and others in similar communities to call for data-driven, proven solutions to what is a preventable tragedy. Check out the National Network for Safe Communities to learn about what works.
An International Latino Book Awards finalist, Blood in the Fields is available in print, ebook and audio editions. I also co-produced the related documentary for Edward James Olmos's series Voces on PBS.
In progress |
I am currently writing a memoir/nonfiction book about people healing PTSD by hitting the road. It sounds rough, and it is, but it's also joyous. Funny even.
Especially when the cure includes a very big dog and a very tiny van.
The book is taking a long time.
I'm savoring the process.
My essay Road Atlas will give you a taste.
Hit the player if you want to hear Atlas play in the Colorado River.
see you down the road.
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