My mom, like most Indigenous women of her time, didn’t really value Western education. It was my dad, an Italian son of immigrants, who pushed me to go to university. He knew a diploma was a key to the middle … Read more
I never dreamed of being a journalist. I came to this profession without studying it in college, guided by my love for the written word. I had studied history at the university, and always imagined that choice would lead me … Read more
As a reporter, I have written numerous stories about people. I hope I got as many stories right as I could, but I’m sure I missed many, too. The one I most regret not capturing is a personal one. That … Read more
It’s odd that we forget people in our reporting. We’re people. Everyone around us is a person, however annoying their habits might be. People want to know about people; gossip and curiosity are some of our default settings. Yet we … Read more
I didn’t always know I wanted to be a reporter. I came at it sideways, in college, after deciding to major in creative writing. There’s no career path for writing majors, so I did what a lot of aspiring writers … Read more
I came into journalism in a roundabout way. I was a voracious reader as a child, growing up in middle-class Nairobi, partly as a retreat from a difficult home situation as my parents’ marriage broke down. I spent hours poring over world maps, absorbing obscure facts from encyclopedias, and reading all manner of novels from Dickens classics to Sweet Valley High. Read more
The very first time I viewed a William H. Johnson painting, the work moved me so deeply, I immediately declared him my favorite artist. I was barely a teenager. I didn’t have a sophisticated, refined eye and … Read more
While on assignment in Somalia a few years back, I found myself sitting in the waiting room of the Mogadishu mayor’s office alongside a dozen Somali men—some in white robes, some in baggy suits. One of them—an old man with a … Read more
My grandmother was well known for telling extraordinary tales. One in particular has stuck with me since the summer I was dispatched alone to her in Delhi. At the time I was living in Kuwait where my father had found … Read more
Two years ago, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette gave me the reporting opportunity of a lifetime—go to the Dominican Republic and Cuba to write about the dynamics of the baseball culture on each island. In … Read more
