Lynell George
Assistant Professor: B.A., Loyola Marymount University.
Lynell George is an award-winning journalist who has, for more than 20 years, covered Los Angeles and its environs. She's a graduate of Loyola Marymount University with a B.A. in English. She teaches "Introduction to Journalism," as well as feature writing courses, including "Telling L.A.'s Story."
As a staff writer for both the
Los Angeles Times and the
L.A. Weekly, she has studied Los Angeles through various prisms: social issues, news, human behavior, books and literary L.A., visual arts, music, race and identity politics, and sense of place. She is the author of
No Crystal Stair: African Americans in the City of Angels (Verso/Doubleday), a collection of reportage and essays drawn from her reporting.
Her feature writing, interviews and essays have appeared in publications, including
Boom: A Journal of California,
The Smithsonian,
The Boston Globe,
The New Left Review,
The Utne Reader,
The Boston Globe,
The Washington Post,
Essence,
L.A. Style,
O at Home,
Black Clock, and
SF Weekly, as well as websites including
The Root and
Ms.
Her essays have been included in various collections, including
The Black Body (Seven Stories Press),
Writing L.A.: A Literary Anthology (Library of America),
Another City (City Lights), and
Step into a World: a Global Anthology of the New Black Literature.
Los Angeles, however, is the subject that she continues to return to: "I was frustrated that the Los Angeles I knew, understood and frequently traveled across didn't seem to exist on the page. L.A. just felt like a collection of stereotypes, defined by not what it was but what it wasn't. There was a complexity, richness and a sense of fast-forward evolution that I wanted to discuss with people living it L.A. life--in the moment. Ultimately I began to document what I saw in news and feature stories--long-form, short, or just impressionistic urban moments. Journalism was the pass to ask the questions. The stories that came from that reporting were key to a city diffuse, difficult to define, maddening yet beautiful--that felt much more like home."