I’m an award-winning, multimedia artist, trauma-informed investigative journalist, Pulitzer-presented playwright, anti-prison theater activist, author, producer, somatic practitioner and 2019 Stanford John S. Knight Fellow based in Oakland and San Rafael, CA.
For well over a decade, I have used trauma-informed journalism, somatic healing and legislative theater to elevate and empower communities in resistance to the carceral state, exposing the impact of mass incarceration and exploring alternative approaches to preventing harm in our society.
My approach to my work in many ways reflects my unique life experiences. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, I became actively involved in the antiwar movement while finishing my undergraduate work at University of California, Berkeley. During this time, I also worked as an International Human Rights Observer in Zapatista indigenous communities in Chiapas, Mexico for several years. In 2008 I moved to Damascus, Syria, to study Arabic, teach English to Iraqi refugees, and start out as a journalist. In 2009 my life took a dramatic turn when I was captured by Iranian border guards while hiking near a tourist site in Northern Iraqi Kurdistan and imprisoned as a political hostage. I was psychologically tortured and imprisoned in incommunicado, solitary confinement for 410 days at Iran’s Evin Prison.
After my release in 2010, I became an internationally known advocate against the overuse of solitary confinement in US prisons and a critic of our carceral system as a whole. As a UC Berkeley Visiting Scholar, I conducted a three-year investigation into isolation in US prisons, interviewing 75 prisoners in 13 prisons across the country. Based on this investigation, I wrote and produced a play, The BOX, based on true stories of resistance to solitary confinement, which premiered in San Francisco in 2016 to sold-out audiences. In 2022 I worked with The Pulitzer Center and Art4Justice to organize, produce, co-direct and act in The End of Isolation Tour, which traveled in a converted school bus and performed The BOX in 10 cities across the U.S. on the frontlines of banning solitary confinement in alignment with abolitionist principles of decarceration.
My op-eds and investigative trauma-informed journalist projects have been published by The Atlantic, The New York Times, Mother Jones, the Daily Beast, CNN, San Francisco Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, Reuters, and more. I co-authored an anthology, Hell Is a Very Small Place, composed of the stories I collected from incarcerated Americans. In 2018 I hosted a podcast, Of Two Minds, on divisiveness in America, and in 2019 I co-created a nonfiction graphic novel called Flying Kites: A Story of the 2013 California Prison Hunger Strike. in 2022 I contributed an essays to The Sentences That Create Us.
In addition to my journalism, creative storytelling projects and legislative theater tours, I have been committed to healing arts and spiritual practices for over 30 years, namely various forms of yoga and meditation. I've been a certified Tui Na massage therapist (CMT) for 20 years and was recently certified as a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP). I use these methods in my coaching work, workshops and speaking, as well as in my living practice of somatic anti-racism and prison abolitionism.
For well over a decade, I have used trauma-informed journalism, somatic healing and legislative theater to elevate and empower communities in resistance to the carceral state, exposing the impact of mass incarceration and exploring alternative approaches to preventing harm in our society.
My approach to my work in many ways reflects my unique life experiences. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, I became actively involved in the antiwar movement while finishing my undergraduate work at University of California, Berkeley. During this time, I also worked as an International Human Rights Observer in Zapatista indigenous communities in Chiapas, Mexico for several years. In 2008 I moved to Damascus, Syria, to study Arabic, teach English to Iraqi refugees, and start out as a journalist. In 2009 my life took a dramatic turn when I was captured by Iranian border guards while hiking near a tourist site in Northern Iraqi Kurdistan and imprisoned as a political hostage. I was psychologically tortured and imprisoned in incommunicado, solitary confinement for 410 days at Iran’s Evin Prison.
After my release in 2010, I became an internationally known advocate against the overuse of solitary confinement in US prisons and a critic of our carceral system as a whole. As a UC Berkeley Visiting Scholar, I conducted a three-year investigation into isolation in US prisons, interviewing 75 prisoners in 13 prisons across the country. Based on this investigation, I wrote and produced a play, The BOX, based on true stories of resistance to solitary confinement, which premiered in San Francisco in 2016 to sold-out audiences. In 2022 I worked with The Pulitzer Center and Art4Justice to organize, produce, co-direct and act in The End of Isolation Tour, which traveled in a converted school bus and performed The BOX in 10 cities across the U.S. on the frontlines of banning solitary confinement in alignment with abolitionist principles of decarceration.
My op-eds and investigative trauma-informed journalist projects have been published by The Atlantic, The New York Times, Mother Jones, the Daily Beast, CNN, San Francisco Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, Reuters, and more. I co-authored an anthology, Hell Is a Very Small Place, composed of the stories I collected from incarcerated Americans. In 2018 I hosted a podcast, Of Two Minds, on divisiveness in America, and in 2019 I co-created a nonfiction graphic novel called Flying Kites: A Story of the 2013 California Prison Hunger Strike. in 2022 I contributed an essays to The Sentences That Create Us.
In addition to my journalism, creative storytelling projects and legislative theater tours, I have been committed to healing arts and spiritual practices for over 30 years, namely various forms of yoga and meditation. I've been a certified Tui Na massage therapist (CMT) for 20 years and was recently certified as a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP). I use these methods in my coaching work, workshops and speaking, as well as in my living practice of somatic anti-racism and prison abolitionism.