Writings
I write for publications and for myself.
Professional writing:
The Noe Valley Voice has published my work on several occasions:
For the April 2021 issue I wrote a piece about the work of Alemany Farm during the pandemic, “Alemany Farm: Growing Food Security During the Pandemic.” (page 13)
For the January 2021 issue my article on 11-year old baker Carmelo Foy-Martí, “Cooking and Baking with Carmelo,” was featured on the front page.
For the May 2019 issue I highlighted the history of Los Siete de la Raza on the 50th anniversary of the struggle to free seven young Latino men from jail in “Neighborhood Boundaries and a Story That Crossed Them 50 Years Ago.”(page 17)
For the January 2019 issue I covered the effort to digitize local neighborhood journalism in “Preserving Neighborhood History Through Digitizing Community Newspapers.”(pages 12-13)
In March 2015, I wrote a quick and dirty piece for Timeline.com on 80 years of San Francisco history, through five generations, “What Was San Francisco Life Like When…?”
In 2014, a short blurb of my writing about Ohlone ceremonial bear dance was included in Tom Cole’s A Short History of San Francisco (Heyday Books).
Keith Hennessy and I collaborated on a reportback of a conversation we attended at YBCA in April 2011 between Lemi Ponifasio and Peter Sellars.
I have written for, edited, and produced print and web-based communications materials for San Francisco Bay Area nonprofit organizations since 1996. I have spent over two decades writing grants and fundraising materials. I am a historian and researcher, and this also leads to written work.
Personal writing:
As a writer reflecting on the world around me, inspiration comes from a combination of being of service to my community, direct engagement with social justice issues, and immersion in the variety of cultural environments that travel, work, and study in 25 countries on 6 continents has afforded me.
Putting words on a page has been both a constant outlet for self-expression and an urgent need. As an international disaster relief volunteer, I have not only used my professional skills as a nonprofit administrator, but also found an outlet in written form for the intensity of these experiences. I arrived in Thailand in 2005 to volunteer six weeks after the tsunami, returning as the fundraising coordinator for the Tsunami Volunteer Center during 2006, joined fellow disaster responders in Peru after the Pisco earthquake in 2007, and volunteered as the Development and PR Director of GrassRoots United in 2010 in post-earthquake Haiti. Witness to the trauma in these areas, I let the images and feelings coalesce in my writing, finding my protection and source of hope through crafting my story. The writings never solely being for myself, I have attempted to demystify and contextualize international crisis response in order to not just reflect reality, but hopefully also to shape others’ sense of it.
Read an example of my writings from when I was in Thailand as a disaster relief volunteer with the Tsunami Volunteer Center.