A sampling of some of my favorite narrative features, investigations, and essays I have edited for Mother Jones.
She Never Hurt Her Kids. So Why Is a Mother Serving More Time Than the Man Who Abused Her Daughter? By Samantha Michaels. July/August 2022
Winner 2022 National Magazine Award for Video/Finalist for Reporting; 2023 Harry Frank Guggenheim Prizes for Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting; 2023 John Bartlow Martin Award for Public Interest Magazine Journalism
My Family Lost Our Farm During Japanese Incarceration. I Went Searching for What Remains. By Ruth Murai. February 2022
Winner of 2022 AAJA Excellence in Written Reporting Features
The Fight to Remember the Black Rebellion at Igbo Landing. By Ramenda Cyrus. January 2022
A Jim-Crow Era Murder. A Family Secret. Decades Later, What Does Justice Look Like? By Samantha Michaels. November 2021
Escape From the Millionaire Meme Mogul. Samantha Michaels. June 2021
“The Machine That Eats Up Black Farmland.” Kathryn Joyce, Nathan Rosenberg, and Bryce Stucki. May/June 2021
National Association of Black Journalists 2022 Salute to Excellence Award
After a Century of Dispossession, Black Farmers Are Fighting to Get Back to the Land. By Tom Philpott. May/June 2021
This Land Is Not Your Land: A brief history of the US government appropriating farmland from people of color. By Andrea Guzman and Piper McDaniel. May/June 2021
Biden’s Other Nuclear Option. By Boyce Upholt. March/April 2021
Whose Streets? Oakland residents convinced the city to rethink how it tackled gun violence. Now, amid calls to defund the police, other cities are eyeing its strategy. By Samantha Michaels. Sept/Oct 2020
Nominated for a National Magazine Award and anthologized in the Best American Magazine Writing, 2021.
Netflix’s “Indian Matchmaking” Tells Women to Compromise. I Refused to Do That. By Sinduja Rangarajan. July 2020
“The Workers Are Being Sacrificed”: As Cases Mounted, Meatpacker JBS Kept People on Crowded Factory Floors. By Esther Honig and Ted Genoways. May 2020
Jail Is a Terrible Place to Have a Period. One Woman Is on a Crusade to Make It Better. By Samantha Michaels. February 2020
Get Out. Hundreds of cities have adopted a new strategy for reducing crime in housing. Is it making cities safer—or whiter? By Samantha Michaels. Nov/Dec 2019
Rosalía and the Blurry Borders of What it Means to Be a Latin Artist. By Justin Agrelo. October 2019
Environmentalism’s Next Frontier: Giving Nature Legal Rights. By Jackie Mogensen. July/August 2019
One Man Is Trying to Fight Climate Change By Mobilizing an Unlikely Team: Iowa’s Farmers. By Brian Barth. July/August 2019
Digging into the Messy History of “Latinx” Helped Me Embrace My Identity By John Paul Brammer. May/June 2019
Life After Life. The Supreme Court said no more life without parole for kids. Why is Antonio Espree one of the few to get out of prison? By Samantha Michaels. Jan/Feb 2019
Love Contractually: Why Unconventional Families Should Put It in Writing. By Nicole Pasulka. May/June 2018