Culture & news features

Every Student Deserves a Legacy (offsite). Since spring of 2004, I have been part of the KnowledgeWorks Foundation’s award-winning storytelling project. During that time, I have spent many hours at local urban high schools, witnessing some of their daily struggles as they undergo reform efforts funded by KnowledgeWorks (in partnership with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation). You can find my piece on Brookhaven High School in the 2006 publication “Small Moments, Big Dreams,” pieces on Brookhaven and Africentric Early College in the 2007 publications and a retrospective on four years at Brookhaven, “From First Day to First Graduates,” published in fall of 2008. You can also read a piece I wrote about the experience of storytelling in the foundation’s “think tank” publication, Primer, here.

From Hatemonger to Healer: Memoirs of a professional racist
An interview I did with ex neo-Nazi Floyd Cochran in the mid 1990s when he was three years into his new life as an anti-racist activist. The story was widely reprinted around the U.S., used as educational material in campaigns against hate crimes and was included in a body of work on the rise of the religious right in Ohio that won a national award for best local political series.

Undersung Heroines: Women in Rock (750 words)
Features interviews with Barbara O’Dair, editor of Trouble Girls: The Rolling Stone Book of Women in Rock and Gillian Garr, author of She’s A Rebel.

Preparing for Stay-at-Home Parenting (Offsite: Will open in new window)
Parents and experts offer advice about financial and emotional preparations a couple can make before the arrival of a baby.

Culture Clash (2,500 words)
A story about Columbus, Ohio artist Gilda Edwards, whose African-inspired art caused a controversy over possible censorship at Alpine Elementary school.