Contributing writers

Sam Bloch is an environmental journalist and the author of “Shade: The Promise of a Forgotten Natural Resource” (Random House), a “compelling … conversation-starter” (NPR) and New Yorker Best Book of 2025 that changes the way we think about a critical resource that should be available to all. He has covered climate change and urban design for Places Journal, Slate, CityLab, The New York Times, and Landscape Architecture Magazine, and written about art and music for L.A. Weekly, Art in America, Artnet, and other publications. Previously, he was a staff writer at The Counter, where he reported on food and agriculture. Bloch is a graduate of the Columbia Journalism School, and a former MIT Knight Science Journalism Fellow and Emerson Collective Fellow. He is based in New York, where he lives with his partner and their son.

Katharine Gammon is a freelance science writer in Santa Monica, CA, who has written for The Atlantic, The New York Times, WIRED, National Geographic, The Guardian, and other outlets. She specializes in environmental journalism, and her stories have twice been featured as honorable mentions in The Best American Science and Nature Writing. Gammon holds an undergraduate degree in environmental studies and anthropology from Princeton University and a master’s degree in science writing from MIT. She is a grantee of the University of Southern California’s 2025 Health and Climate Change Reporting Fellowship.

Robert Greene is an independent journalist and 2026-27 John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation fellow. His work focuses on the justice system, policing, mental health, California water and drought, and Los Angeles city and county government and politics. Greene was a member of the Los Angeles Times editorial board for 18 years and won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. He previously was a staff writer for LA Weekly and associate editor of the Metropolitan News-Enterprise. Before becoming a journalist he was an attorney, practicing law in Los Angeles.

Sam Quinones is a Los Angeles-based freelance journalist, a reporter for 37 years, and author of five acclaimed books of narrative nonfiction. He is a veteran reporter on immigration, gangs, drug trafficking, and the border. He is formerly a reporter with the L.A. Times, where he worked for 10 years. Before that, he made a living as a freelance writer residing in Mexico for a decade. His latest book is “The Perfect Tuba: Forging Fulfillment from the Bass Horn, Band, and Hard Work” (Bloomsbury Press, 2025).

Deanne Stillman has written several acclaimed books of literary nonfiction, including “Twentynine Palms,” an LA Times “best book of the year” which Hunter Thompson called “a strange and brilliant story by an important American writer”; “Mustang,” an LA Times “best book of the year,” in audio with Frances Fisher, Anjelica Huston, John Densmore, and others; “Desert Reckoning,” based on a Rolling Stone piece, Spur and LA Press Club Award winner; and “Blood Brothers,” which received raves from Kirkus to True West Magazine and was excerpted in Newsweek. Her essays have appeared in the Washington Monthly, UK Independent, LA Review of Books, NY Times, and elsewhere, and her plays have been produced and won prizes around the country. And she’s a founder of the UC Riverside-Palm Desert MFA Low Residency Creative Writing Program, where she taught for 13 years.

David L. Ulin is the author or editor of more than twenty books, including the novel “Thirteen Question Method and Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles,” shortlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. A professor of English at the University of Southern California, he is the former book editor and book critic of the Los Angeles Times and the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and UCross Foundation, as well as a COLA Individual Master Artist Grant from the City of Los Angeles. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, Harper’s, The New York Times, The Paris Review, and The Best American Essays 2020.

Crystal Villarreal is an Emmy-nominated screenwriter and award-winning journalist with over fifteen years of experience in media and six years writing for scripted television. She is a former editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Los Angeles Times. She has written for several children’s television shows, including “Work It Out Wombats,” “Paw Patrol,” and “Carl the Collector.” She graduated from the University of Georgia with degrees in journalism and women’s studies.