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STEPHANIE ELIZONDO GRIEST
Expertise Central and South America; Mexico; Post-Communist Societies; Migration; Media; Civil Liberties; Global Youth
Stephanie Elizondo Griest
is a Chicana author, speaker, and activist from South Texas. Her
memoir,
Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana
(Villard/Random House, 2004) documents her four-year excursion to 12
communist and post-communist societies, where--among other things --
she taught journalism at China Daily as a Henry Luce Scholar
and volunteered at a Russian children's shelter. It won the National
Association of Travel Journalists of America's "Best Travel Book of
2004" award. Her latest
book,
Mexican Enough: My Life Between the Borderlines
(Washington Square Press, August 2008) documents the year she
spent traveling across Mexico, interviewing undocumented workers,
indigenous resistance fighters, Zapatistas, and rebel teachers in
Oaxaca. It will be published by Atria/Simon & Schuster in August
2008. Excerpts of the book won the 2007 Richard J. Margolis Award
for Social Justice Reporting. She has also written for the New York Times, Washington Post, Associated Press, Latina Magazine, and Bitch, and recently received a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University to write a second memoir that combines her travels in Mexico with family history there, and the stories of undocumented workers. As a national correspondent for The Odyssey: US Trek, she once drove 45,000 miles across the United States, documenting histories traditionally left out of classroom textbooks for a Web site monitored by 500,000 K-12 students. The co-founder and director of the Youth Free Expression Network, a project of the National Coalition Against Censorship, she frequently writes and speaks out for the civil liberties of young people. A sought-after public speaker, she has performed in venues ranging from Royal Festival Hall in London to salons in Mexico to universities, public schools, and community centers throughout the United States. She can be contacted via her Web site at www.aroundthebloc.com.
Honors & Affiliations Ms. Griest won the 2007 Richard J. Margolis Award. The Richard J. Margolis Award is given annually to a promising nonfiction writer whose work combines warmth, humor, wisdom and concern with social justice. The award was established in honor of Richard J. Margolis, a journalist, essayist and poet who gave eloquent voice to the hardships of the rural poor, migrant farm workers, the elderly, Native Americans and others who are seldom heard. He was also the author of a number of books for children. The 2007 award is accompanied by a $5,000 honorarium and a one-month residency at Blue Mountain Center (Blue Mountain, New York), the award's sponsor. For more on the Margolis Award, visit www.margolis.com/award.
In 2008, Atria/Simon & Schuster will publish Griest's Mexican Enough: My Life Between the Borderlines, which chronicles her journey to her mother's native Mexico. There she investigates the murder of a prominent gay activist, sneaks into prison to meet with resistance fighters, rallies with rebels in Oaxaca, and interviews scores of migrant workers and the families they were forced to leave behind. Earlier adventures inspired Griest's 2004 memoir Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana (Villard/Random House, 2004) and the guidebook 100 Places Every Woman Should Go (Travelers' Tales, 2007). Griest is currently at work on a fourth work of non-fiction, The Book of Silence, which will examine the many manifestations of silence, from a religious "vow of silence" to censorship; from a reverent "moment of silence" to solitary confinement; from "silent treatment" to deafness.
She was also a Hodder Fellow at Princeton University for the 2005-2006 academic year, and has won residencies at Can Serrat in Barcelona, Spain; the Art Omi International Arts Center in Ghent, New York; the Writer's Colony at Dairy Hollow in Eureka Springs, Arkansas; the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts in Nebraska City, Nebraska; and Ragdale in Lake Forest, Illinois. Griest has also been awarded honors and scholarships from the following organizations: El Andar, USA Today, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, the Freedom Forum, the Network of Hispanic Communicators, the Headliners Foundation, the Pan-American Golf Writer's Association, Scripps-Howard, the National Hispanic Scholarship Fund, and the University of Texas at Austin's School of Journalism.
Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana has been named "Book of the Year" by the Mayor's Book Club of Austin, Texas; "Best Travel Book of 2004" by the National Association of Travel Journalists of America, and a "Best Book of 2004" by the San Francisco Chronicle.
100 Places Every Woman Should Go won the Society of American Travel Writers Foundation's Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism's "Gold Prize for Best Travel Book" in 2007.
Education
University of Texas at Austin Certificate of Advanced Russian from the Moscow Linguistics Institute
Languages:
Contact http://aroundthebloc.com/ www.myspace.com/aroundthebloc
BOOKS Mexican Enough: My Life Between the Borderlines Washington Square Press, August 2008
Travelers’ Tales, 2007
Winner of the Society of American Travel Writers Foundation's Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism's "Gold Prize for Best Travel Book" in 2007.
Villard, 2004
"Book of the Year" by the Mayor's Book Club of Austin, Texas; "Best Travel Book of 2004" by the National Association of Travel Journalists of America, and a "Best Book of 2004" by the San Francisco Chronicle.
Ms. Griest has contributed to the anthologies:
Go Your Own Way: Women Travel the World Solo Seal Press, 2007
Lengua Fresca: Latinos Writing on the Edge Mariner Books, 2006
Bookmark Now: Writing in Unreaderly Times Basic Books, 2004; 2005
SELECTED ARTICLES
MSNBC and other news organizations shared Griest's ideas for “Fabulous Mother’s Day Getaways,” May 7, 2008.
"A Melting Pot or a Salad Bowl?," for Divine Caroline, February 13, 2008.
"A Night on the Navajo Nation Reserve," for Divine Caroline, February 8, 2008.
"Tears from Turkey," for Divine Caroline, November 15, 2007.
"Tibetan Truths," for Divine Caroline, October 17, 2007.
"Ten Tips for Wandering Women," for Divine Caroline, April 13, 2007.
"Eight Places Every Woman Should Go," Yahoo! Travel News. February 19, 2007.
LECTURES & APPEARANCES
Held a "Crash
Course in Memoir Writing Workshop" at MediaBistro
in New York City Nov. 7, 2007
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