Contributor

    Lauren Kessler, a narrative journalist and immersion reporter, is the award-winning author of fifteen books that combine deep research with in-the-trenches reporting.

    In pursuit of stories she:

    • Solo-hiked 500 miles across northern Spain,
    • Ran a writers’ group for Lifers inside at a maximum security prison,
    • Joined a ballet company and danced on stage 30 times,
    • Spent 18 months in middle school classrooms,
    • Worked as a bottom-of-the-rung caregiver at an Alzheimer’s facility,
    • Became a gym rat, lab rat, Guinea pig in a quest to discover how much we can control aging,
    • Traveled with an NCCA Division 1 women’s basketball team,
    • Made her family eat raw foods lasagna,
    • And met so very many extraordinary human beings.

    Her books have won three Oregon Book Awards. One of these, Stubborn Twig, was chosen by the Oregon Library Association as the All-States Reads to celebrate Oregon’s sesquicentennial. Her work has appeared in the New York Times magazine, Los Angeles Times magazine, O, salon, and elsewhere—including a special LookOut three-part series on hunger and food insecurity in Lane
    County    .

    She publishes an original essay every week on her Substack, Life After All (free to all), and has written extensively on the art and craft of journalism for
    Harvard’s Nieman Storyboard.

    She runs writing workshops, here and abroad, and—apologies–teaches Storytelling for Social Change at the University of Washington. For those who knew her back-when, she also ran the graduate program in literary nonfiction at the University of Oregon’s School of Journalism and Communications.

    An Oregonian by nature if not by birth, she has lived and worked in Eugene since spot was a pup. As they say. (Translation: since the 80s.) She is a backcountry hiker, a tent-camper, a bacon-loving pescatarian, a dedicated gardener (with a potato fetish), an orchardist, and a proud and grateful 15-year waitstaff volunteer at Food for Lane County’s Dining Room.

    You should know that she hates kale and has never eaten avocado toast.