NEWS & MAGAZINE WRITING

I pen essays and articles about the topics of our time: race, arts, and faith. I discuss how they intersect with each other and how they impact culture. I’m a contributing writer for The Washington Post, Faithfully Magazine, and L.A. Parent; and I’m a former contributor to The Root and LA Weekly. Additionally I’ve written for Ebony, The Huffington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, The Los Angeles Times, AARP, Shadow and Act, TV Guide, CNBC’s TheGrio, PBS SoCal, Good Housekeeping, Parents, and others.

My 2019 article “How Natural Black Hair at Work Became a Civil Rights Issue” published in JSTOR Daily, provided a comprehensive history of anti-natural Black hair laws in the U.S. The trailblazing article has been cited in law journals and legal cases for the Virginia Law Review, Harvard Journal of Law & Gender, and the ACLU of Connecticut. It is a trusted resource for teachers and social justice organizations throughout the country. 

My favorite journalism project was working as a U.S. 2022-2023 Rosalynn Carter Fellow for Mental Health Journalism. Through the fellowship I partnered with Vogue.com to produce a three-part series that showed how alopecia diagnoses affect the mental health of Black women in the U.S. You can check out that series here, here, & here.

BOOK WRITING

The California Arts Council generously awarded me a fellowship to support my first solo book, Loving Your Black Neighbor as Yourself: A Guide to Closing the Space Between Us, published by WaterBrook and Penguin Random House. Prior book projects include essays in We Are The Baby-Sitters Club: Essays and Artwork from Grown-up Readers, by Chicago Review Press and L.A. Affairs: 65 True Stories of Nightmare Dates, Love at First Sight, Heartbreak & Happily Ever Afters in Southern California, by The Los Angeles Times.

SENSITIVITY READING

As a Media Studies major at Pomona College, I studied how women and people of color are portrayed in various mediums. This training, coupled with years of experience writing about race and DEI issues, enables me to help publishers ensure that their books accurately reflect and honor Black characters and readers. Peep this essay I wrote about depictions of Black characters in YA Literature.

Writing samples and a partial list of clients sit below. (Additional work samples and resumé are available upon request.)

Happy Reading!