Photo by Marika Cleto
samgoldman212 [at] gmail [dot] com
I’m a writer, freelance journalist, and chronic daydreamer based in San Francisco.
I like telling richly descriptive, longform stories that open readers up to ideas and worlds we hardly, if ever, think about. I’ve covered an acoustic ecologist’s quest to preserve natural soundscapes by helping establish the world’s first wilderness quiet park in the Ecuadorian Amazon; the origins, development, and success of India’s national women’s ice hockey team; and the intersection of traditional masculinity and mass violence in my college town.
Once upon a time, I was an opinions editor, a columnist, a general-assignment reporter, and an editorial intern, covering everything from congressional elections to California’s drought to San Francisco police. My work has appeared in Vox, the San Francisco Chronicle, HuffPost, California Magazine, Medium, and more. In 2018, my ice hockey story won the Bernard Taper Memorial Award in Longform Journalism, and in 2019, I co-taught an undergrad course at UC Berkeley on environmental journalism. Nowadays, I'm also the administrative officer at UC Berkeley’s Blum Center for Developing Economies.
Speaking of Cal, I have a master's from its Graduate School of Journalism, where I focused on narrative writing and dabbled in audio journalism. I earned my bachelor’s in geography from UC Santa Barbara, where I also studied professional writing and caught the journalism bug while working for one of its student newspapers.
As much as I love telling amazing true stories, I also like making them up, and I’m currently at work on my first novel. When not writing, reporting, or officiating administration, you can find me running through Golden Gate Park, petting neighborhood cats, playing volleyball, reading the news, rooting for UCSB, Cal, and LA sports teams, drinking lattes, practicing Spanish and Norwegian, or putting a dent in my ever-growing queue of leisure reading.