writing
A selection of essays and journalism.
Sketching Elijah – CALIFORNIA, Winter Issue 2016
"...Elijah hadn’t come to study, he’d come to shoot the shit. A 26-year-old transfer student I’d met in Arabic class, Elijah had been a sniper in the Special Forces. After eight years and tours in Sudan, Iraq, and Afghanistan, a few bullet wounds had finally gotten him out of the Army..."
Pierced in St. Petersburg – CALIFORNIA, Winter Issue 2016
"One of the best things about our deceptively drab, Soviet-style building on the western edge of Vasilievsky Ostrov was that it was filled with artists. There were at least seven floors of actors, puppeteers, set designers, acrobats, dancers, and musicians, and we were all..."
Dust in the Machine – CALIFORNIA, Fall Issue 2017
"Hear the letters BMI and the first thing you probably think of is “body mass index.” Keep your eyes peeled because “brain-machine interfaces” could soon hijack more than just the acronym. Jose Carmena was in a mid-Ph.D. crisis studying robotics at the University of Edinburgh when Miguel Nicolelis, John Chapin, and colleagues from..."
A Rabbi, an Ex-Soldier, a Palestinian, and some Lesbians walk into a band...–CALIFORNIA online, Feb 2016
"The American filmmakers knew they were taking risks. They couldn’t expect to smuggle Israelis-passing-as-Americans in and out of the West Bank—not to mention pointing a camera at everything while they were there—without facing any consequences. So when they pulled their car full of women off the road in Nablus to film a b-roll shot, and looked up to see a man walking toward them with a machine gun, they kind of panicked..."
Natural by Design: Next-Gen Robots Run, Flap, Crawl–and Talk to Each Other – CALIFORNIA, Winter Issue 2015
"Imagine a city in the near future devastated by a powerful earthquake. Rescue workers arrive and unleash hundreds of tiny robots. Some of these robots flap into the air with “wings,” sending images of the disaster area to the ground team—a swarm of insect-like devices the size of a matchbox that scuttle over the concrete and disappear into crevices..."
Crazy Love: Cal Performances Brings Arabia’s Iconic Love Story to the West – CALIFORNIA, Fall Issue 2016
"The epic poem Layla and Majnun is arguably the most famous love story in the Middle East, and yet many Westerners have never heard of it. It is the tale of two teenagers who fall deeply in love but are tragically kept apart, even until death...."
Resurrecting the Old UC Theatre: Will this revitalize Berkeley's music scene? – CALIFORNIA online, March 2015
Imago Theater Makes Magic with "La Belle" – CALIFORNIA online Nov 2017