Writers and reporters for KneeDeep Times not only have a way with words, but also a deep knowledge of the local environment and communities of the San Francisco Bay Area. The current news team has its roots in the established Estuary News Group, but we are actively recruiting new and more diverse writers in age and background (Inspiration Team). If you want to write, sketch, film, or tell stories for us,
please get in touch.
Alastair Bland
is a freelance journalist from San Francisco who writes about water policy in California, rivers and salmon, marine conservation and climate change. His work has appeared at NPR.org, Smithsonian.com, Yale Environment 360, Hakai and Bay Nature, among many other outlets.
10 Posts
Aleta George
writes about the nature, history and culture of California. Trained as a geographer at San Francisco State University, her passion is to look for the intersection of influences regarding a place or an event. She is a frequent contributor to Estuary News Group and Bay Area Monitor. Her work has also been published in Smithsonian, High Country News, Christian Science Monitor, Los Angeles Times, and San Francisco Chronicle. She is the award-winning author of Ina Coolbrith: The Bittersweet Song of California's First Poet Laureate.
4 Posts
Amy Mayer
is a science journalist based in the Bay Area. She writes about ecology, agriculture and climate science and spent many years working in public radio. An alum of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, she began her post-grad school career in Fairbanks, Alaska and has also worked in western Massachusetts and central Iowa. In 2022 she was selected as the lead science communicator aboard the JOIDES Resolution research vessel. She lives on a hill that on a clear day offers views of the Bay and Mt. Diablo.
1 Post
Ariel Rubissow Okamoto
is KneeDeep’s managing editor. She is a Bay Area environmental writer and editor and co-author of a Natural History of San Francisco Bay (UC Press 2011). For the last decade, she’s been reporting on innovations in climate adaptation on the bayshore (Bay Nature). She is also an occasional essayist for the San Francisco Chronicle. In other lives, she has been a vintner, soccer mom, and waitress. She lives in San Francisco close to the Bay with her architect husband Paul Okamoto. You can learn more about her at http://bayariel.com.
25 Posts
Ashleigh Papp
is a science writer based in Brooklyn, New York. With a background in animal science and biology, she enjoys writing about emerging environmental issues, wildlife, and conservation-related science. When not reading or writing, she's playing outside with friends or inside with her cat, Sandy. Photo: Lisa Strong. @heysmartash
2 Posts
Audrey Mei Yi Brown
is an independent writer based in the Bay Area who works at the intersection of environment, culture, social equity, food, art and climate. She covers environmental climate justice issues, among other topics.
2 Posts
Cariad Hayes Thronson
reports on legal and political issues. She has served on the staffs of several national publications and is a long-time contributor to Estuary News. She lives in San Mateo with her husband and two children.
8 Posts
Christopher D. Cook
is an author and award-winning journalist based in San Francisco. He has written for dozens of national publications, including Harper's, the Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, The Economist, The Guardian, Mother Jones, The Christian Science Monitor, The Nation, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Progressive, and Columbia Journalism Review. He is the author of Diet for a Dead Planet: Big Business and the Coming Food Crisis. Visit www.christopherdcook.com.
2 Posts
Constance Sommer
is a freelance writer in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Vogue and Westways, among others, and can be viewed at www.constancesommer.com.
3 Posts
Daniel McGlynn
is based in the East Bay and frequently writes about technology and the environment. He has a background in environmental education, environmental journalism, and as a writer/consultant for frontier technology companies. He is most interested in how people and communities use technology to organize, communicate, and adapt to a changing climate.
2 Posts
Elyse DeFranco
writes about wildlife ecology and environmental science. Her background as a wildlife biologist often leads her to stories about the joys of scientific discovery and the ways that people interact with, and about, the environment. See her website for her writing and photography
1 Post
Isaac Pearlman
covers sea level rise, flooding, and other topics around the San Francisco Bay Area. His stories and essays have been featured in Sierra Magazine, Earth Island Journal, Estuary News, and the Progressive Populist, among other outlets.
5 Posts
Jacoba Charles
is an environmental consultant and science writer. Her first article, at age eight, was about the behavior of ducks as observed from the roof of her family’s barn. It went unpublished. She later received Masters degrees from the Columbia Schools of Journalism and Earth and Environmental Science. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Salon, Modern Farmer, Bay Nature, Estuary News, and many more publications—including literary magazines and CEQA documents. Her botany blog can be found at flowersofmarin.com and her website is jacobacharles.com. A sixth-generation Sonoma County resident, she divides her time between Petaluma and her family home near the Gualala River.
7 Posts
Joe Eaton
writes about endangered and invasive species, climate and ecosystem science, environmental history, and water issues. He is also "a semi-obsessive birder" whose pursuit of rarities has taken him to many of California's shores, wetlands, and sewage plants.
3 Posts
John Hart
is an environmental journalist and author of sixteen books and several hundred other published works. He is also the winner of the James D. Phelan Award, the Commonwealth Club Medal in Californiana, and the David R. Brower Award for Service in the Field of Conservation. He writes on California water policy and history, and on other topics intertwined with climate change.
3 Posts
Juan Moreno Haines
is a journalist incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison; senior editor at the award-winning San Quentin News; and member of the Society of Professional Journalists, where he was awarded its Silver Heart Award in 2017 for being “a voice for the voiceless.” Haines’s work has appeared in Solitary Watch, The Guardian, The Appeal, Hastings Race and Poverty Law Journal, Above the Law, UCLA Law Review, Life of the Law, The Oakland Post, California Prison Focus, LA Progressive, CalMatters, Witness LA, and Street Spirit. In 2020, Haines was awarded the PEN Prison Writing Contest’s Fielding A. Dawson Prize in Fiction.
1 Post
Kate Bradshaw
is a Peninsula-based journalist who writes about the environment, the outdoors, food and government. Her work has appeared in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, the Palo Alto Weekly, the Mountain View Voice, The Almanac and PUNCH Magazine. She was a community engagement fellow (2018) and a data reporting fellow (2020) with the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism.
1 Post
Kimberly Hickok
is a freelance science journalist based in the Santa Cruz Mountains. She has a background in marine biology and toxicology, and is a graduate of the UC Santa Cruz Science Communication Program. Her reporting covers a wide range of topics, from physics to biomedicine to agriculture, but she’s most passionate about the stories that directly impact her local community. Her work has appeared in Bay Nature, California Local, Live Science, and Popular Mechanics, among others.
1 Post
Kristine Wong
is a multimedia journalist who reports on energy, environment, sustainability, food, and culture. Her preferred forms of storytelling are through film (shooting and editing video) and narrative writing. Kristine’s work has been published in The Guardian US/UK, Sierra Magazine, Modern Farmer, Bay Nature, The Huffington Post, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Civil Eats, and other publications. Prior to becoming a journalist, she worked for environmental justice and public health organizations. For KneeDeep Wong interviewed and filmed a new leadership academy for Oakland residents building climate resilience.
1 Post
Lilah Burke
is a freelance reporter in New York. Her work has appeared in the New Republic, the Revelator, Vegetarian Times, New York Focus, and Washingtonian Magazine. She was previously a reporter at Inside Higher Ed. She is interested in the challenges of environmental preservation and how people choose to navigate them. She was inspired to write about second-growth redwoods, the focus of her first article for KneeDeep, when visiting the beautiful forests and coasts of California.
3 Posts
Lonny Ivan Meyer
is a freelance photographer situated in the Bay Area. Most of his work focuses in photojournalism and the fine arts. He graduated from the University of California, Davis with a bachelor’s degree in international relations, drawing him toward a global political perspective in many of his works. Rooted in the desire to affect social change, his pieces reflect an alternative way of seeing, recording and understanding events and social relations. His photos can be found in KneeDeep articles. In his spare time, you can find him surfing and exploring the California coast, or brewing some delicious concoctions.
0 Posts
Marianne Messina
spent several years as the theater and dance writer for Metro Silicon Valley. More recently, she writes about conservation and sustainability with a focus on solutions. She was a 2022 Kiplinger Fellow in climate change reporting, and her work appears in many online and print magazines, including Mongabay, Civil Eats, Earth Island Journal, and Corporate Knights.
1 Post
Meg Duff
is a freelance science journalist and associate editor for KneeDeep Times. Her writing has appeared in Slate Magazine, Live Science, Yale Climate Connections and around the internet. @duffmegs.
2 Posts
Michael Hunter Adamson
was born and partly raised in the Bay Area. He employs his love for nature and his interest in people to help tell the unfolding story of the living Earth. He has worked for The Nature Conservancy and the arts and education nonprofit NaNoWriMo, taught English in Madrid-based High School equivalent, and volunteers with The Marine Mammal Center. He is the editor of the Bay Area Monitor and also writes for Estuary and AcclimateWest.
6 Posts
Nate Seltenrich
is a freelance science and environmental journalist who contributes to the San Francisco Chronicle, Sonoma and Marin magazines, Estuary News, the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, and other regional and national websites and publications, on subjects ranging from environmental health and climate change to pharmacology and neuroscience. He lives in Petaluma with his wife, two boys, and seven egg-laying ducks.
3 Posts
Patrick Barnard
has been a Research Geologist with the USGS in Santa Cruz since 2003, is the Project Chief for the Coastal Climate Impacts Project, and Co-Developer of the Coastal Storm Modeling System (CoSMoS). His research focuses on coastal hazards driven by storms and sea level rise across U.S. beaches and estuaries. He is a science advisor for KneeDeep's investigative 2022-2023 Extremes in 3D series.
1 Post
Robin Meadows
is an independent science journalist who covers water, climate resilience, and environmental policy. Her work has appeared in bioGraphic, C&EN, High Country News, Maven's Notebook, Scientific American, and elsewhere. She’s a Pulitzer Center grantee, an Institute for Journalism & Natural Resources fellow, a contributor to The Craft of Science Writing, and a UC Santa Cruz Science Communication Program alum and mentor. Robin lives in the San Francisco Bay Area near the Suisun Marsh, the largest brackish wetland on the West Coast. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
7 Posts
Santiago Flórez
is a Colombian journalist, educator, illustrator and anthropologist based in New York City. He worked in the education department of the American Museum of Natural History and recently completed an MA in bilingual journalism at the Craig Newmark Journalism School. Twitter: rflorezsantiago
1 Post
Sierra Garcia
is an interdisciplinary marine scientist and environmental writer with a focus on oceans, climate, and communities. Her work has appeared in publications serving a wide range of audiences, including Grist, JSTOR Daily, the Oxford Climate Review, and Estuary News. She is a National Geographic explorer and 2022-2023 Fulbright research fellow.
9 Posts