Stewart Wilburn is master beadworker and a Wailaki/Tolowa/Pomo/Wintu artist. We adopted one another several years back, and have traveled together around Northern California attending tribal gatherings. This semester my San Jose State University students produced a book for and about Stewart:  a collection of his artwork, quotes, photos, and an interview one of the students […]

Writing is an act of courage, faith, heart, and joy. For the past seven years I’ve worked at crafting true stories (creative nonfiction essays), centered around my life as an ethnoecologist. I’ve gone through hundreds of drafts, dozens of rejections. My first essay to be nominated for a Pushcart was published in Fall 2014 by […]

When I first began publishing in the sciences, most peer-reviewed academic papers – based on months, years, even decades of hard work – were read by an average of seven people. Seven. Thanks to open-access journals on the worldwide web, that number is rising. But not that much: a quick overview glance of study citations in […]

So there was this guy. A shy, kind artist who worked in metal, lived by the ocean, had tons of friends, and also did an awesome job detailing cars. One day he drove four hours from his home to Ft. Bragg to deliver an enormous hanging sculpture-thingy to my best friend Virginia, who lived in my […]