ABOUT
Sarah Fuss Kessler is a freelance writer, editor, and podcast producer based in Los Angeles. Her reporting and creative writing have appeared in publications such as VQR, Los Angeles magazine, Tablet, the Forward, Pacific Standard, Shondaland, and Los Angeles Review of Books, where she served as a nonfiction editor. A long-form investigation she wrote about a high school #MeToo uprising in the San Joaquin Valley appeared in Medium's current events publication, GEN, was a Longreads editors' pick, and became an episode of NPR's Latino USA. Her business clients have included the Milken Institute and the American Psychoanalytic Association. Last year, she produced and edited episodes of the Daily Rally, a podcast from Outside magazine.
Formerly, Sarah was the senior editor of special projects at TakePart.com, a news startup owned by Participant Media, known for films such as Spotlight, Food, Inc., and An Inconvenient Truth. She restructured TakePart's education, food, and wildlife sections, which entailed recruiting, managing, and editing nationally recognized experts and emerging journalists. A column she developed there now runs in the New York Times. At Participant Media, she also served as executive editor and producer of a joint website with MSN (MSN Causes) about international social and environmental justice.
During four years at Yahoo!, Sarah became the senior food editor, wrote the Fresh Picks blog, and oversaw food content strategy with writers and partners, such as Mark Bittman, Serious Eats, Food & Wine, and Bon Appétit. Her stories and those she edited ran regularly on Yahoo's front page. Her publishing career began with an internship at Talk magazine, assignments for weekly papers in Columbus, OH, and an associate editor position at the city magazine WhereLA.
In a prior life, Sarah was a field organizer in Tempe, AZ and Albuquerque, NM for John Kerry's presidential campaign. She later managed partnerships at California's Courage Campaign. As a co-founder of Young Progressive Majority, a nonprofit that hosted innovative voter engagement events with local elected leaders, she also oversaw the group's communications and developed its conversational, humorous voice.
Sarah earned her MFA in creative writing from the Bennington Writing Seminars and her BA in English from Cornell University. One time Forbes interviewed her about L.A.'s secret treasures, which she curated in her newsletter at the time, One Thing L.A.
CONTACT
sarahfuss @ gmail.com
(310) 968-4048
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SELECT WRITING
Reported Essay: Through a House of Mirrors: Rewriting the American Cult Story, VQR (Virginia Quarterly Review)Personal Essay: Improv Saved Me--No Joke, TABLET
Investigation: The Teacher. The Basketball Coach. The Rat in the Mail, GEN x MEDIUM
*Editors' Pick at LONGFORM
Radio Story: #MercedTOO, NPR's LATINO USA
Flash essay: Anything Else, Blog/LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS
Article: The Trump 45: A Tween Green Warrior, GEN x MEDIUM
Article: Hidden in Plain Sight, LOS ANGELES magazine
Article: How Women's Studies Is Helping Rural Teens Fix Their Social Culture, PACIFIC STANDARD
Poem: Hallway, HOBARTSELECT EDITING
- LITERARY EDITING - LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS (LARB)
-Reading Audre Lorde After Charlottesville
by Antoinette Nwandu.
*Called "The best of the literary Internet" by Lit Hub
-Beyond the Gaze: Reclaiming the Female Form After Nochlin
by Mara Naselli.
*Called "Required Reading" by Hyperallergic + featured by 3 Quarks Daily
-Again? (Again): Reading Leslie Jamison's The Recovering
by Ellen Wayland-Smith
-Forms and Fractures: A Non-Mother's Hunger for the Writing of Motherhood
by Helen Betya Rubinstei
SELECT AUDIO
- PODCAST, PRODUCER - "THE DAILY RALLY," OUTSIDE MAGAZINE
* interview, script, initial audio editing
- Chris Redman Is Part of Something Much Bigger
- Andi Scarbrough Is Ready for a Spiritual Life
- April Lee Is Ready for Her Next Test - PODCAST, EDITOR - "THE DAILY RALLY," OUTSIDE MAGAZINE
- Tiffany Duong Refuses to Disappoint Herself
- Joann Flaminio Believes in the Power of Doing Good
- Ty Duckett Chooses Vulnerability - RADIO, GUEST + CONTRIBUTOR - LATINO USA (NPR)
- #MercedTOO - A 30-minute story adapted from my investigation for Medium
- LITERARY EDITING - LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS (LARB)
© 2015