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Conference Workshops

SPJ West Coast Multicultural Writer-Editor Conference
July 9 and 10, 2004
Oakland Asian Cultural Center, 388 Ninth St., Ste. 290, Oakland

Speaker Bios

Rose Arrieta has worked as a writer at three daily newspapers and two television stations. She lives in San Francisco where she most recently worked as a news writer for KCBS all-news radio and as a reporter for El Tecolote - a bilingual, bi-weekly newspaper. Since November 2002, she has been reporting about border issues after receiving a grant from the Independent Press Association’s George Washington Williams Fellowship for Journalists of Color. In 1999 she was a writer-in-residence at Hedgebook Retreat for Women Writers in Washington state. She also served as a fellow at the Center for Investigative Reporting in San Francisco in 1994.

Nell Bernstein is former editor of Yo! (Youth Outlook), a monthly magazine by and about young people. She has written for local and national publications including Salon.com, Mother Jones, Redbook, the Industry Standard, Glamour, Health, Legal Affairs, Marie Claire, and Seventeen.

Paul Lee Cannon is a freelance writer and winner of the 2003 New California Media Award for healthcare reporting. He has written for KQED Public Radio, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Advocate, and others. Currently a contributor for Luxury Living magazine, he has also worked for the Center for Investigative Reporting and the Marin Independent Journal.

Christine Carswell is an associate publisher at Chronicle Books in San Francisco, where she runs the adult trade division. She has edited and published a wide variety of fiction and non-fiction - everything from the works of Virginia Woolf to THE BEATLES ANTHOLOGY - both in the United States and her native United Kingdom.

Reese Erlich first worked as a staff writer and research editor for Ramparts, an investigative reporting magazine published in San Francisco from 1963-75. His articles have appeared in San Francisco Lawyer, California Lawyer, the Progressive, California Magazine, Mother Jones, and San Francisco, among other publications. He co-authored the book, "Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn't Tell You" (Context Books, 2003) and produced the radio documentary "Reaching for Peace in the Holy Land," hosted by Walter Cronkite, which is now airing on Public Radio International stations around the US. He won the award for best depth reporting (broadcast) from the Society of Professional Journalists-Northern California chapter (2002).

Pamela Feinsilber is a longtime Bay Area magazine editor, who also consults with authors of books on a project basis. At San Francisco magazine, where she's been a senior editor for five years, she develops feature stories on assorted topics, from the mysterious suicide of a prominent San Francisco art figure to the life of a family with a drug-addicted teen. Each month, she edits an eclectic Arts department that includes two essays on Bay Area artists or performances. She also writes a monthly book review for the magazine, Open Book, as well as longer pieces depending on her time and lapses in sanity.

Angelo Figueroa, is an editor-at-large at Time Inc. in New York, working on special projects with a variety of magazines including Time, Sports Illustrated and the upcoming LIFE newspaper supplement. Figueroa was the founding editor-in-chief of People en Español, the nation’s best-selling magazine for Hispanics, and also the founding content director for AOL Latino, a new Spanish-language ISP from AOL. He began his journalism career at the Miami Herald as staff writer. He later joined the San Francisco Examiner, and eventually became a columnist for both the Long Beach Press Telegram and the San Jose Mercury News, where he was also the founding editor of Nuevo Mundo, a Spanish-language weekly. Long before becoming a journalist, the Puerto Rican-born writer was a firefighter in Detroit, Michigan, where he grew up. He decided to become a journalist, he says, because he wanted Hispanics to become more visible in the nation’s media. Married, with three children, Figueroa lives with his family in New Jersey.

Dawn Garcia was a newspaper reporter and editor for 18 years before being appointed Deputy Director of the John S. Knight Fellowships for Professional Journalists at Stanford University in Dec. 2000. She worked at the Blade-Tribune (Oceanside, California) from 1982-1983; the Modesto Bee (Modesto, California) from 1983-1986, the San Francisco Chronicle from 1986-1991, and then at the San Jose Mercury News from 1992-2000, where she was Assistant Managing Editor, City Editor and State Editor. During the 1991-92 academic year, she was a Knight Fellow at Stanford, where she studied U.S.-Mexico relations, focusing on immigration issues. Garcia was a Pulitzer Prize juror in 1998 and 1999. She also served two terms on the Accrediting Committee of the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (1997-2002). She has been a leader in diversity issues in the newsroom and in newspaper coverage.

Jane Goldman is the founder and editor-in-chief of Chow Magazine, a new food magazine for a young adult audience that mixes passion for food and drink with pop culture. Previously she was editor of Industry Standard, and has worked as a writer and editor for magazines including WIRED, Rolling Stone, New York, Savvy and Health.

Patricia Holt began her publishing career in 1969 at the New York and Boston offices of Houghton Mifflin Company. She was senior editor for San Francisco Book Company, the first western correspondent for Publishers Weekly and for 16 years was book review editor for the San Francisco Chronicle. She is the author of a biography of private detective Hal Lipset called "The Bug in the Martini Olive," reprinted in paperback as the "The Good Detective." She started the free e-mail column Holt Uncensored in 1998. She also operates an editorial service for agents and authors called Manuscript Express.

Lucia Hwang is editor for California Nurse, a monthly publication reporting on nursing and healthcare industry issues. She has worked as an editor at California Lawyer magazine and as a staff reporter at the San Francisco Examiner and San Francisco Bay Guardian. Lucia also serves on the board of the Independent Press Association, a nonprofit group that provides services and advocates for independently published magazines, ethnic newspapers, and other print media.

Linda Jue is director of New Voices in Independent Publishing, a national magazine diversity initiative sponsored by the Independent Press Association. She is also executive editor of the George Washington Williams Fellowship, a program that encourages minority reporters to pursue public interest/social justice journalism. Linda has worked as a magazine and TV journalist at San Francisco Focus, KQED-TV, Center for Investigative Reporting, San Francisco Bay Guardian, SF Weekly, PBS, C-SPAN, and other venues.

Andrew Lam is a writer and an editor with the Pacific News Service, a short story writer, and a regular commentator on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered.” Lam's essays have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country, including the New York Times, The LA Times, and the Chicago Tribune. He has also written essays for Mother Jones, The Nation, Earth Island Journal and other national magazines. Lam was a John S. Knight Fellow at Stanford University during the academic year 2001-02, studying journalism. His awards include The World Affairs Council's Excellence in International Journalism Award (1992), the Rockefeller Fellowship in UCLA (1992), and the Asian American Journalist Association National Award (1993; 1995).

Martin Lasden is a senior editor at California Lawyer, a legal affairs magazine, circulated to 140,000 lawyers in California. He has written for numerous regional and national magazines, including The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, and Esquire.

Gretchen Lee has worked in media for more than 12 years as a reporter and editor. She is managing editor for Curve, the nation's best-selling lesbian magazine. She also works as a freelance contributor to a variety of trade and consumer publications nationwide. As a freelancer, her specialties include work-related topics and entertainment issues. Celebrity interviews for Curve include profiles of Melissa Etheridge, Melanie Chisholm (a.k.a. "Sporty Spice"), Mariel Hemingway, Ally Sheedy and Pam Grier.

Julia Bencomo Lobaco, deputy editor of AARP Segunda Juventud, has more than 20 years of experience as a bilingual editor, reporter and columnist. The award-winning Mexican American journalist was The Arizona Republic newspaper 's first bilingual columnist and also reported on city and county government and on education issues. She served eight years as editor of Florida-based VISTA Magazine, the nation's oldest and largest dual-language publication for Hispanics, and was an editor-at-large for CATALINA Magazine. She has been a member and an alliance manager for the AIDS: ACT Now! Partnership, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention project. She has a strong interest in health issues and is the recipient of a Kaiser Family Foundation/National Press Foundation Mini-grant in Health.

Tram Nguyen, editor of ColorLines, is a writer and journalist from Southern California and Vietnam. Her writing has appeared in the anthology "Asian Americans: The Movement and the Moment," Amerasia Journal, Alternet, New California Media, the Boston Globe, Reno Gazette-Journal, the anthology "The New Faces of Asian Pacific America: Numbers, Diversity and Change in the 21st Century," and the anthology "New Horizons: 25 Vietnamese Americans in 25 Years." She has worked as a trainer and editor at LA Youth, an education reporter at the San Diego Union-Tribune, and an editor for Gidra magazine in Los Angeles. ColorLines is a quarterly that provides news and analysis on race and politics.

Todd Pitock is a long-time freelancer, contributing articles and essays on a range of topics to publications such as National Geographic Traveler, the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, Continental Magazine, American Way, and numerous others in the U.S., Canada, Singapore, the U.K., and other places. Pitock spent two years in Israel, three in South America, and was in Iraq last fall.

Chiori Santiago has written about visual art, performance and music for such publications as American Craft, AsianPacific Art, San Francisco Chronicle, Smithsonian and others. She has served as art critic for the Oakland Tribune and San Jose Mercury News and as Latin music critic for East Bay Express. She is associate editor of The Museum of California, the membership magazine of the Oakland Museum, and editor of Nikkei Heritage, the journal of the National Japanese American Historical Society. Her children's book, "Home to Medicine Mountain," (Children's Book Press) won the American Book Award in 1999. She is recipient of a "Maggie" from the Western States Publishers Association for her writing in Diablo magazine. She is also a 2003-04 recipient of the George Washington Williams Fellowship.

Laurie A. Stevens, student advisor and corporate programs manager at the Institute for International Education's West Coast Center, which administers the Fulbright Program, has been with IIE since 1993. Laurie, who holds a Master of Public Policy degree from Georgetown University, has lived in Spain, Norway, Indonesia, Togo, and Mexico, and has worked in the field of international education for fifteen years.

Pueng Vongs is a freelance writer, editor, and Web producer in San Francisco. She has written articles for Working Woman magazine, Microsoft's San Francisco Sidewalk, and Beatrice's Web Guide. She is a former writer/editor for Money magazine and CBS Marketwatch.com.

Venise Wagner is an assistant professor of journalism at San Francisco State. Previous to teaching she worked for 12 years as a reporter for various California dailies including the San Francisco Chronicle and Examiner, The Orange County Register and The Modesto Bee. She has also written for Parade and Hope Magazine.

David Weir is a visiting professor of journalism at Stanford University and a veteran journalist who was formerly editor-in-chief of 7x7 magazine in San Francisco; vice-president of network programming and product design for Excite@Home; Senior vice-president for editorial operations and managing editor for Salon.com; vice president of content and managing director of programming for Wired Digital; executive vice-president and acting radio news director at KQED; an investigative reporter for Rolling Stone; a senior editor of California magazine; managing editor of Mother Jones; an editorial writer for the San Francisco Examiner; and co-founder and executive director of the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR).

Josh Wilson is the editor of Newsdesk.org, a nonprofit news bureau in San Francisco. He's worked as a freelance and staff writer and editor for the San Jose Mercury News, Wired magazine, SFGate.com and the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

Biologist-turned-science writer Kathleen M. Wong is senior editor of California Wild, the quarterly natural history magazine of the California Academy of Sciences. California Wild (circulation 35,000) showcases the natural richness of California and beyond through a scientific lens. At work, she is a jack-of-all-trades, assigning, editing, and proofreading copy; checking facts; and writing articles. She began her journalism career as the health and science reporter of the Monterey County Herald. She continues to write about scientific matters for a number of national publications, including Health, Nature, Science, and U.S. News & World Report.

Andi Zeisler is the co-founder and editorial/creative director of Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture. She is a former pop-music columnist for the SF Weekly and the East Bay Express, and her writing has also appeared in Ms., Mother Jones, BUST, and the Women's Review of Books.

Helen Zia is the author of "Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People" (FSG, 2000), which was a finalist for the prestigious Miriam Pacific Rim Book Prize, and the co-author with Wen Ho Lee of "My Country Versus Me" (Hyperion Books, 2002), about he Los Alamos scientist who was falsely accused of being a spy. A journalist for more than two decades, she is a contributing editor to Ms. Magazine, where she was formerly executive editor. her work has appeared in numerous publications and broadcasts. She graduated from Princeton University in public and international affairs, and is a member of its first graduating class of women. She attended medical school for two years, then quit and found work as construction laborer, an auto worker and a community organizer, after which she discovered her life's work as a writer.