about me
I’ve been a professional writer and reporter since 1998.
For the Independent, the alternative weekly newspaper serving the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill area of North Carolina, I write about a wide variety of local issues. I’ve covered city council meetings, bills before the state legislature, art exhibits, anti-war protests, gay rights issues and the local music scene, among many other things. I have a particular interest in media and technology and in intellectual property issues as they relate to creativity and innovation.
Before I started at the Independent in January 2003, I worked in the books editorial department of Duke University Press. Prior to moving to Durham in July 2001, I worked for three and a half years at Salon.com in San Francisco, where I was an associate editor in the news department.
While my full-time responsibilities have not allowed for much freelancing, I have also written for Wired News, Ms. Magazine, Southern Exposure magazine and the Los Angeles Times. My stories for the Independent have appeared in Willamette Week (Portland), Creative Loafing (Charlotte), San Diego CityBeat and several other Association of Alternative Newsweeklies member papers.
(See my archives page for links to these stories.)
My husband, Barry Varela, is a writer and researcher at the Sanford Institute for Public Policy at Duke University and the author of books for young readers. I have a one-year-old son and two stepdaughters, ages 12 and 14.