Spring Campaign for Writers at the Edge

This week, meet Mesa Refuge Alum Lisa Morehouse

“The folks at Mesa Refuge took a chance on me. When I applied for the residency, I was early in my career as a public radio journalist. The team didn’t balk at the idea of a radio reporter among its print writers. Instead, they embraced me, and many more audio producers since.

I learned from my fellow residents–how they developed their creative practices, when to listen to their bodies and minds to pause–and became a stronger, calmer writer in those two weeks. The big to-do list I arrived with? It never came out of my backpack. Instead, I tried to tap into my intuition. I crept out to the cedar-lined East Shed before sunrise, read and wrote on the edge of Tomales Bay as it woke up, recorded the quail and geese, took hikes in the afternoon, and realized many ways a creative person can be productive.

I developed or worked on my major audio projects while at Mesa Refuge–one on changes in rural California, one on the people behind our state’s food and farming. I can’t imagine these projects, or my work in audio, without the Mesa Refuge.”

Listen to Lisa’s California Foodways radio report on climate change in Ojai, California (2022) on Soundcloud.

Lisa Morehouse (alum 2011, 2015) is an award-winning public radio reporter and editor. Her series California Foodways is a county-by-county exploration of stories at the intersection of food, culture, history, economics, labor and the environment. The stories air on KQED’s The California Report Magazine, and national shows like All Things Considered, Here and Now, The World, and The Splendid Table, as well as on the California Foodways podcast.

The series received a national Edward R. Murrow Award and four James Beard nominations, and Lisa was named a fellow for the UC Berkeley-11th Hour Food and Farming Journalism Fellowship, and Les Dames d’Escoffier San Francisco Karola Saekel Craib Excellence In Food Journalism Fellowship. Lisa is the Senior Editor for KALW Public Radio’s news magazine, Crosscurrents, where she helps train new audio journalists.

Will you support writers like Lisa Morehouse by donating to our spring campaign?
DONATE HERE

Campaign photos by Jean Melesaine