Each of our contributors passionately specialize in environmental, social justice and sustainability, and have worked hard for years to build hope for the future.
Raised in Northern California, Shannon Aguiar is a photographer and content creator based out of Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay area. She shoots a diverse range of subjects for editorial and commercial clients.
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Jeffrey Anderson is the founder of District Dig, an award-winning vehicle for long-form storytelling and investigative reporting in Washington, D.C. He has written for more than 20 years, at LA Daily Journal, LA Weekly, Baltimore City Paper, The Washington Times and Washington City Paper. His journalism is rooted in public interest, social impact and compelling narratives.
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Alex Bacon is a graphic designer and photographer based in Oklahoma City. He was the designer of the award-winning journal, Slake: Los Angeles, and has been making photographs since 1992. If you like his work here, consider following him on Instagram.
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Nikolai Barkats is a writer and artist with a background in digital media, and a deep love of narrative-driven storytelling. He’s particularly interested in telling stories about wildlife and the environment. Born and raised in Washington D.C., Nikolai has lived and worked in New York, Seattle, and Los Angeles.
Tony Barnstone teaches at Whittier College and is the author of 23 books and a music CD. His books of poetry include Apocryphal Poems; Pulp Sonnets; Beast in the Apartment; Tongue of War: From Pearl Harbor to Nagasaki; The Golem of Los Angeles; Sad Jazz: Sonnets; and Impure. He is also a co-translator of Chinese and Urdu literature. His awards include: The Poets Prize, the Strokestown International Prize, the Pushcart Prize in Poetry, The John Ciardi Prize, The Benjamin Saltman Award, and fellowships from the NEA, NEH, and California Arts Council. He has also co-edited the anthologies Republic of Apples, Democracy of Oranges: New Eco-Poetry from China and the United States; Dead and Undead Poems; and Monster Verse. His new publications are a co-translation from the Urdu, Faces Hidden in the Dust: Selected Ghazals of Ghalib and a creativity focused tarot deck, The Radiant Tarot: Pathway to Creativity, with artist Alexandra Eldridge. He is currently working on the libretto for an opera.
Chris Barton is a writer and editor living in Portland. He was a staff writer with the Los Angeles Times covering TV, music, and culture for 19 years, a stint that included acting as jazz critic. He is a regular contributor to Downbeat, and is working on his first novel. He and his wife live with two cats and a mildly neurotic dog.
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Vince Beiser is an award-winning journalist and author of The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization. In his 20-plus years in journalism, Beiser has reported from over 100 countries, states, provinces, kingdoms, occupied territories, no man’s lands and disaster zones. He has exposed conditions in California’s harshest prisons, trained with troops bound for Iraq, ridden with the first responders to natural disasters, scouted the radioactive ruins of Fukushima, and hunted down other stories from around the world for publications including Wired, The Atlantic, Harper’s, Time, The Guardian, Mother Jones, Playboy, Rolling Stone, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times. Follow him on Twitter at @vincebeiser.
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Jamie Brisick’s books include Becoming Westerly: Surf Champion Peter Drouyn’s Transformation into Westerly Windina, We Approach Our Martinis With Such High Expectations, Have Board, Will Travel: The Definitive History of Surf, Skate, and Snow, and The Eighties at Echo Beach. His writings and photographs have appeared in The Surfer’s Journal, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Guardian. In 2008 he was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship. He lives in Los Angeles.
Sarah Debasree Brown is the social media assistant for Red Canary Magazine She has a bachelor’s in media and communications from Whittier College and is a current master’s student in social media management and communications at Northeastern University. She has a passion for the outdoors, social justice, environmental advocacy, and women empowerment. She currently resides in Boston, MA with her black cat named Baloo.
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Melissa Chadburn’s writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, New York Times Book Review, New York Review Books, Longreads.com, Paris Review online and dozens of other places. Her essay on food insecurity was published in Best American Food Writing 2019. Her debut novel, A Tiny Upward Shove, is forthcoming with Farrar, Straus, & Giroux. She is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Southern California’s Creative Writing Program. Chadburn is a worker lover and through her own work and literary citizenship strives to upend economic violence. Her mother taught her how to sharpen a pencil with a knife and she's basically been doing that ever since.
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We publish deeply reported journalism focusing on environmental, sustainability and social justice issues. Our goal is to bring you difference-making work that provokes discussions, inspires reflection and speaks to the times with stories that prove timeless.
PUBLISHER
Tracy McCartney
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Joe Donnelly
MANAGING EDITOR
Tori O’Campo
CONTENT CREATOR
Sam Slovick
ART DIRECTOR
Nancy Hope
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
Erin Aubry Kaplan
Karen Romero
Tony Barnstone
ASSOCIATE EDITOR
Tanner Sherlock