Award-winning journalists Laura McClure, Carly Stern, and Christopher D. Cook will read from their latest work and discuss journalism during a critical election season, ongoing culture wars, and disinformation, moderated by Terry Tierney.

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Panelist Bios

Laura McClure is an award-winning journalist based in Silicon Valley. As a writer and editor, she has reported on the future of everything from toy design to Liberia for TED-Ed, IDEO, Mother Jones, Salon, Edutopia, and Bright; her creative writing prompts are included in several books, most recently 642 Tiny Things To Write About (Chronicle, 2015). As a speaker and instructor, Laura has led mixed media workshops at the National Congress of American Indians Youth Leadership Academy, Stanford University, USC Annenberg, UC Berkeley, the International Reporters and Editors Conference, TED-Ed Weekend, TED Active, TED Summit, SXSW Interactive, and the Roosevelt Institute. She is currently a magazine editor at the Nob Hill Gazette in San Francisco.

Carly Stern an independent journalist based in San Francisco who explores different facets of inequality through narrative stories, including how social determinants of health affect people’s psychology, economic mobility and life outcomes. She typically covers the intersection of housing, economic hardship, health care and disability. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, the San Francisco Chronicle and California Health Report, among others, and it has been supported by the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, the Fuller Project and the Journalists in Aging Fellows program. She has won nine San Francisco Press Club Awards, and her work was part of a package recognized in the 2022 California Journalism Awards. Carly is a member of The San Francisco Writers Grotto, ASME Next, the Association of Health Care Journalists, SPJ NorCal, Study Hall, The Writers’ Co-op and Solutions Journalism Network. She has taught a series of career development workshops on the business of freelancing at Duke University. An avid long-distance runner, skier, lover of the outdoors, road trip enthusiast, and fangirl of the California coastline, Carly is also a visual artist with an emphasis on portraiture and landscape painting.

Christopher D. Cook is an author and award-winning journalist based in San Francisco. His writing has appeared in Harper’s, The Atlantic, The Economist, the Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, Mother Jones, The Christian Science Monitor, The Nation, Columbia Journalism Review, and many others. He won an Aronson Award for his investigative report on welfare agencies requiring recipients to work in dangerous meatpacking plants. Other honors include a Project Censored Award, Northern California SPJ Award, finalist for an Investigative Reporters and Editors Award, and two-time finalist for the Livingston Award. Christopher’s first book, Diet for a Dead Planet: Big Business and the Coming Food Crisis, was widely praised and went paperback. He has also worked as a reporter for The Oakland Tribune and United Press International, city editor for The San Francisco Bay Guardian, and project editor at San Francisco Public Press. Chris has been a member of The Writers Grotto since 2001 and is on the board of directors. He is also a member of Conspiracy of Beards, a San Francisco choir. 

Terry Tierney is the author of The Poet’s Garage (Unsolicited Press, 2020) and the novels Lucky Ride (Unsolicited Press, 2021) and The Bridge on Beer River (Unsolicited Press, 2023). His poems and stories recently appeared in The Bellevue Literary Review, Remington Review, Reed Magazine, Ghost Parachute, Flash Fiction Magazine, Rust + Moth, Typishly, Valparaiso Poetry Review, The Lake, and other publications. His second poetry book, Why Trees Stay Outside, will be published by Unsolicited Press in October 2024. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his family, including two fluffy cats and an enthusiastic Golden Retriever.