Silja J.A. Talvi, a senior editor at In These Times, is an investigative journalist and essayist with credits in many dozens of newspapers and magazines nationwide, including The Nation, Salon, Santa Fe Reporter, Utne, and the Christian Science Monitor.
Ms. Talvi is the recipient of multiple national and regional awards, including 12 awards from the Society of Professional Journalists (Pacific Northwest); a New American Media Award for Immigration-related reporting; as well as five consecutive national awards for magazine reporting from the National Council on Crime and Delinquency (NCCD). Her book, Women Behind Bars: The Crisis of Women in the U.S. Prison System was published in November 2007 (Seal Press, an imprint of Perseus.) In March 2008, Talvi’s book received the PASS (Prevention for a Safer Society) literary award from the NCCD. She now heads the Women Behind Bars Project, a sponsored project of the Seattle-based Center for Social Justice. Ms. Talvi’s articles on social issues—with a particular emphasis on criminal justice, ethnicity and gender—have garnered a dozen Society of Professional Journalists Western Washington regional awards. Talvi was honored in 2006 to receive a New American Media award for immigration-related reporting. In 2005, 2006 and 2007, she received five consecutive PASS award from the National Council on Crime and Delinquency for a wide range of investigative magazine features, including the impact of Three Strikes sentencing on African American men; an undercover story about the American Correctional Association, Taser weaponry; and the interstate transfer of prisoners. All but one of these stories first appeared in ITT. Born in Helsinki, Finland, and raised in Hollywood, California, Talvi earned her BA with Honors in Ethnic Studies in 1991, from Mills College in Oakland, California. She was then admitted into the first graduate program in Women Studies at San Francisco State University, completing her master’s thesis in 1993 about Israeli and Palestinian women. Since 1996, Talvi has been a full-time journalist and essayist, reporting from areas as diverse as the San Francisco Bay Area, Silicon Valley, New Mexico, Los Angeles, the Puget Sound, as well as Western and Eastern portions of Washington State. Internationally, she has reported from Europe, the Caribbean, Canada and Mexico. She currently lives in the Central District of Seattle. Talvi’s essays, investigations and articles have appeared in the following book anthologies: Prison Profiteers: Who Benefits from Mass Imprisonment (New Press); The W Effect: Bush’s War on Women (The Feminist Press);  Prison Nation: The Warehousing of America’s Poor (Routledge); Economics Now (Oxford University Press); Body Outlaws: Young Women Talk About Body Image and Identity (Seal Press); Readings for the 21st Century (Allyn & Bacon/Simon & Schuster Education Group); and It’s So You: Women Write about Personal Expression through Fashion & Style (Seal Press).
Dispatch
De-escalating the Drug War
Obama's pick to head ONDCP is better than your average drug czar.
Silja J.A. Talvi
Feature
Ending the War on Drugs
Will the Obama administration put justice back in the criminal justice system?
Silja J.A. Talvi
Feature
Our Town vs. Exxon
Marine biologist Riki Ott explains how Cordova, Alaska, rebounded 20 years after the oil spill.
Silja J.A. Talvi
Feature
All Work, No Play
Vacation time shouldn't be the privilege of a few, but the right of all
Silja J.A. Talvi
Viewpoint
Reporting From The Ground Up
The power of street reporting
Silja J.A. Talvi
Dispatch
Seattle Battles the Homeless
Silja J.A. Talvi
Women Behind Bars
War on drugs leads to explosion of female incarcerations
Silja J.A. Talvi
Feature
Tupperware and Tasers
Silja J.A. Talvi
Culture
Suffering Secondary Trauma
Finding Iris Chang: Friendship, Ambition and the Loss of an Extraordinary Mind explores the complexity of Chang's psychology as it formed around the demands of her profession and her personal struggles stemming from her writing about The Rape of Nanking
Silja J.A. Talvi
Viewpoint
Justice Denied
One man stands between Flozelle Woodmore and the "free" world--California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
Silja J.A. Talvi
Dispatch
The Drug War’s Collateral Damage
Those victimized by a crackdown on marijuana since the early '90s can be denied everything from food stamps to voting rights to the right to adopt a child
Silja J.A. Talvi
Feature
Non-Lethal Weaponry: The Next Generation
Silja J.A. Talvi
Feature
Dread Beats
The dub poetry of Linton Kwesi Johnson
Silja J.A. Talvi
Feature
Stunning Revelations
The untold story of Taser-related deaths
Silja J.A. Talvi
Passive Resisters
Taser stun guns used on non-violent protesters.
Silja J.A. Talvi
Going After the Civilian Market
Taser expands marketing to sell stun guns to police and civilians.
Silja J.A. Talvi
Viewpoint
End Medical Experimentation on Prisoners Now
Prisoners have no rights regarding the quality of their medical care or their participation in experiments.
Silja J.A. Talvi
Dispatch
Follow the Prison Money Trail
Private prison companies invest millions in elections.
Silja J.A. Talvi
Feature
Narcissists Rђ Us?
Three decades later, Christopher Lasch's analysis still neatly explains why self-love will tear us apart
Silja J.A. Talvi
Culture
Kal (Black) Like Me
Silja J.A. Talvi
Viewpoint
Convict Nation
Silja J.A. Talvi
Culture
Pow! Shazaam! Its ғMinoriteam!
Behind the scenes of a controversial new Cartoon Network show
Silja J.A. Talvi
Feature
No Room in Prison? Ship Em Off
Prisoners have become unwitting pawns in a lowest-bidder-gets-the-convict shuffle game
Silja J.A. Talvi
Feature
Reporting on Americas Most Unwanted
Immersion journalists Sasha Abramsky and Steve Bogira bring the lives of the impoverished, adjudicated and disenfranchised to life.
Silja J.A. Talvi
Reaching for real solutions to real problems: health and homelessness in Mass. and L.A.
Silja J.A. Talvi
The Lifeline: L.A. Times dares to show us what the war looks like ...
Silja J.A. Talvi
Vexatious Vicissitudes of Victory: V for Vendetta
Silja J.A. Talvi
ICE takes on bongs, rolling papers, and other “head shop” items
Silja J.A. Talvi
Feature
Race Riot?
It's far too easy to pin recent violence in the L.A. County Jail on ethnic tensions
Silja J.A. Talvi
Culture
Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome
Dr. Joy DeGruy Leary talks about her provocative new book
Silja J.A. Talvi
Condi speaks out on sisterhood
Silja J.A. Talvi
Scared of getting mugged? Take a cruise.
Silja J.A. Talvi
Spin? What spin? $1.62 billion spent by U.S. gov’t on media/pr contracts.
Silja J.A. Talvi
Guns don’t kill people, but Cheney (almost) does ...
Silja J.A. Talvi
Freedom of Information Act? What’s that again?
Silja J.A. Talvi
Prison spending in CA to top $8 billion in 2006
Silja J.A. Talvi
Those damn liberal homosexual Hollywood-types ...
Silja J.A. Talvi
Keep those soldiers awake! (Can I have some?)
Silja J.A. Talvi
Diplomatic relations where they matter: Tequila!
Silja J.A. Talvi
Majority of Americans support Bush impeachment for wiretapping.
Silja J.A. Talvi
Feature
Cult of Character
How the 'secular' Character Training Institute is working to build evangelist Bill Gothard's vision of a First-Century Kingdom of God--one city, one state, one school board, one police force and one mind at a time.
Silja J.A. Talvi
Podcasts we don’t need!
Silja J.A. Talvi
Steven Tyler would sing to you, too ...
Silja J.A. Talvi
Entertainment meets revolution
Silja J.A. Talvi
Culture
Bad Girls
Silja J.A. Talvi
Effort mounts to stop the 12/13 execution of the co-founder of the Crips.
Silja J.A. Talvi
Land o’ hate crimes ...
Silja J.A. Talvi
No FOIA allowed! Look out for BARDA, a new, top secret gov’t agency.
Silja J.A. Talvi
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