about

I’m an investigative journalist and the author of Data Baby: My Life in a Psychological Experiment, an acclaimed memoir about my 30-year tenure as a research subject in a groundbreaking University of California, Berkeley longitudinal study that sought to predict who over 100 Berkeley kids, including me, would grow up to be. Emma Roberts’ Belletrist book club selected Data Baby as its December 2023 pick. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly called my book “a fascinating debut memoir” and “gripping stuff.” Kirkus Reviews deemed it “An intelligently provocative memoir and investigation.” The Globe and Mail praised it as “a thought-provoking, ridiculously propulsive book.” You can buy Data Baby from the retailer of your choice here, order a signed copy here, and find out more about it, including upcoming readings and events, here. I’m represented by Creative Artists Agency. You can contact me here. I’m on X, Instagram, Threads, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

My investigative reporting, commentary, and essays have been published in over 100 print and digital publications around the world, including The Atlantic, Harper's Bazaar, Salon, Slate, The Daily Beast, Newsweek, Marie Claire, Esquire, The LA Weekly, The San Francisco Chronicle, and Variety, among other outlets. I've appeared on TV, radio, and podcasts over 100 times, including “Politically Incorrect,” CNN, FX, Playboy TV, the UK’s Channel 4, and National Public Radio. In 2002, I launched The Reverse Cowgirl, which was one of the Internet’s first sex blogs, and which TIME named one of the best blogs of 2008. I've been described as a “rare commodity online” and a “modern-age Studs Terkel.”

My work and I have received widespread global media attention, including The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, The New York Post, National Public Radio, The Washington Post, BuzzFeed, The New York Times, Wired, Salon, The Atlantic, MSNBC, The New Yorker, Slate, TIME, BBC Radio, The Globe and Mail, CNN, Bustle, The Village Voice, Alta Journal, The Los Angeles Times, CBC Radio, The Daily Beast, Playboy, The San Francisco Chronicle, Glamour, The Telegraph, High Times, The Chicago Tribune, Lifehacker, The Huffington Post, Southern Living, The Mercury News, Daily Blast Live, The Kansas City Star, Shondaland, Next Big Idea Club, Maclean’s, Eater, KATU, Book Riot, Air/Light, Cybernews, Publishers Weekly, The Sun, PRINT, ABC Radio National (Australia), Library Journal, Gambit, Channel 4 (UK), Zibby Magazine, and Kirkus Reviews.

As a Forbes senior contributor, I cover the business of sex. My widely-read blog has been cited by The Wall Street Journal, Ad Age, ESPN, BuzzFeed, and Katie Couric, among others. From 2018 to 2019, I was the founding editor of Forbes Vices. I helped build out a new digital vertical and managed a team of global contributors covering the vice beat, including gambling, cannabis, sex, drugs, guns, and alcohol.

As a freelance journalist and essayist, I’ve written for Harper's Bazaar, Details, Newsweek, Salon, Slate, The Daily Beast, Marie Claire, Topic, Gay Magazine, Esquire, The Guardian, Men's Health, The Atlantic, Glamour UK, Forbes.com, The Billfold, Women's Health, Inc., The Telegraph, Movieline, The Vancouver Sun, The Virginian-Pilot, Wired, The New York Post, Variety, The San Francisco Chronicle, The San Francisco Examiner, The San Francisco Bay Guardian, The East Bay Express, and The LA Weekly, among many other publications.

As The Fixer, I’m a strategic communications consultant. I've worked with CEOs, venture capitalists, and Academy Award-winning directors. My client list includes WarnerMedia, Playboy Enterprises, FX Networks, Procter & Gamble, and Publicis Groupe. Book a session with me here.

My investigative projects have garnered international media attention and have been taught in college classrooms. In 2009, I published “They Shoot Porn Stars, Don’t They?”, a pioneering work of long-form investigative journalism exposing the devastating impact of the Great Recession on the adult movie industry. Slate included it in "Seven Great Stories About Paying for Sex and Being Paid to Have It,” and Longform deemed it “unflinching and devastating.” An essay I wrote about that project, "The Numbers On Self-Publishing Long-Form Journalism," has been taught in “Media, Politics & Power in the Digital Age” at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and Studio 20 at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University. In 2008, I created “The Letters Project,” a five-year project in which men and women confessed their secret sex lives to me in anonymous letters. That project was featured on Salon, Newsweek, and CBC Radio.

As a producer, I’ve developed scripted and unscripted series, including true crime, outdoor adventure, and limited series. I’ve produced field segments for and appeared as on-camera talent on FX and Playboy TV. I consulted on Steven Soderbergh's "The Girlfriend Experience."

As a copywriter, I’ve worked with Publicis Groupe's MSLGROUP and Weber Shandwick, increasing digital engagement and writing television commercial scripts for some of the world's biggest brands. I’ve ghost-tweeted for celebrities, and I’ve voiced Pepto-Bismol on Facebook, growing social engagement by 500% as market share grew 11%. I’ve created content for Scope, Oscar Mayer, Crest, Metamucil, and Swiffer.

From 2008 to 2011, I was a senior editor at WarnerMedia, where I edited The Frisky, a popular digital vertical for 18-to-34-year-old women. I wrote nearly 1,400 posts, managed a team of freelance contributors, and directed the digital outreach program, growing the site’s audience from startup to 4M unique visitors and 22M page views a month. From 2011 to 2012, I was the Digital Outreach Manager for Conan O'Brien's "Conan" on TBS, teaming up with Emmy-winning Team Coco Digital to generate and disseminate viral video content.

I’m the author of a short story collection, You’re a Bad Man, Aren’t You? My short stories have appeared in anthologies, including Significant Objects: 100 Extraordinary Stories About Ordinary Things, edited by Rob Walker and Joshua Glenn and published by Fantagraphics; Best Sex Writing: 2009, edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel and published by Cleis Press; Smut: Volume 1, edited by the Editors of Nerve.com and published by Chronicle Books; Homewrecker: An Adultery Reader, edited by Daphne Gottlieb and published by Soft Skull Press; Sudden Stories: The Mammoth Book of Miniscule Fiction, edited by Dinty W. Moore and published by Mammoth Books; and Chick-Lit 2: No Chick Vics, edited by Cris Mazza and published by Fiction Collective 2. My fiction has also been published in Bending Genres, Hilobrow, Ghost Town, Construction, PANK Magazine, Clackamas Literary Review, Contrary Magazine, Sycamore Review, Nerve, Identity Theory, 3:AM Magazine, Born Magazine, Hobart, Monkeybicycle, Opium, A Shaded View on Fashion Fiction, Word Riot, Elimae, and 2 Gyrlz Quarterly. My comics have been featured in Best Erotic Comics: 2008, edited by Greta Christina and published by Last Gasp; Dirty Stories: Volume 3, edited by Eric Randolph and published by Eros Comix/Fantagraphics; Headpress 23: Funhouse, edited by David Kerekes and published by Headpress Press; and on Artbomb.

I’ve been a speaker at The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, CA; the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley in Berkeley, CA; the Crossroads Writers Conference in Macon, GA; Techweek Chicago at the Merchandise Mart in Chicago, IL; and Electronic Orphanage in Los Angeles, CA. I’ve read my nonfiction and fiction at the Berkeley Public Library - North Branch in Berkeley, CA; Book Soup in Los Angeles, CA; Writers with Drinks at the Make-Out Room in San Francisco, CA; Roar Shack at 826LA in Los Angeles, CA; Vermin on the Mount at Book Show in Los Angeles, CA; The Encyclopedia Show at the Vittum Theater in Chicago, IL; The North Door in Austin, TX; the 215 Festival at Tritone in Philadelphia, PA; the New Orleans Book Fair at the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans, LA; Spoken Interludes at Le Colonial in Los Angeles, CA; Sit 'n' Spin, produced by Joey Soloway, at the Comedy Central Stage in Los Angeles, CA; The F-Word Project at the San Francisco Art Institute in San Francisco, CA; and Fake Fiction at The Fake Gallery in Los Angeles, CA.

My photographs have appeared in and on Men's Health, Forbes.com, mashKULTURE, Le Journale de la Photographie, Thought Catalog, Nerve, Cloud King, and Arthur, among other media outlets. My Los Angeles estate sale photo series, “You Can’t Take It With You,” can be found here.

I hold a B.A. in English from the University of California, Berkeley and an M.A. in English from the Program for Writers at the University of Illinois Chicago. In 2020, I was a grantee of the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Howard G. Buffett Fund for Women Journalists. In 2019, I was selected for the Social Science Summer Institute for Journalists at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York, NY. From 2018 to 2019, I was the Lawrence Grauman Jr. Post-graduate Fellow at the Investigative Reporting Program at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley in Berkeley, CA. In 2016, I was a Resident at the Noepe Center for Literary Arts on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. In 2015, I was a Fellow at the Logan Nonfiction Program at the Carey Institute for Global Good in Rensselaerville, NY, and I was a Storyteller at Thread at Yale at Yale University in New Haven, CT. I was born in Oakland, grew up in Berkeley, and live in Los Angeles.

(Photo credit: Clayton Cubitt)