New work …

• A non-fiction essay in Panorama: The Journal of Travel, Place, and Nature. In my piece, Animal Gaze, I contemplate a surprise connection with caged animals when they turn their eyes back on me.

• In commemoration of Zimbabwe’s 40th year of independence, photographer Hannah Mentz produced a visual media project to highlight 40 inspiring Zimbabweans. In partnership with Sara Davies and Jane Snelgrove, I co-edited the essays that accompanied Hannah’s portraits, all of which are published in the limited edition coffee table book, Great Zimbabweans.

General journalism …

• Former NY mayor Michael Bloomberg’s $50 million anti-gun effort rolls into Texas, with ground support from Moms Demand Action. Carolyn reported for Al Jazeera America.

• The tragic case of a pregnant woman on life support highlights political tensions in the Lone Star State, particularly regarding ‘pro-life until birth‘ politicians. She reported for Al Jazeera America.

• Hundreds of armed folk gathered outside the Alamo to express their Second Amendment right to bear arms. She covered the rally — carefully — for Al Jazeera America.

• What do people in some of the reddest counties outside Austin think of the federal shut-down? She asked them for Al Jazeera America and they told her about guns, U.S. border patrol agents, over-spending, Obamacare and doctored $10 bills.

• Before Carolyn was a writer, she was a health policy analyst on the other side of the pond. She also used to work for the UK’s hospital association, which is how – when she crossed the Atlantic — she got to write for The Texas Hospital Association. She wrote about the Baldrige quality criteria, the role that Texas hospitals play in local communities, how rural hospitals make health IT meaningful, a profile of Memorial Hermann CEO Dan Wolterman, how Texas hospitals deliver quality infant care, how Texas’ underfunded mental health system shifts a costly burden to emergency rooms, and how changing hospital culture brings about improvements in patient safety.

• Wondering what eight things you should stop doing NOW for a sleeker, summertime you? Wonder no more after checking out this Glamour.com slideshow.

• Carolyn wrote a feature for the literary online mag, Fringe, about the crazy experience of having written a story that garnered some media interest. Not all journalists are created equal. It was hard to deal with some of them once her story had developed a life of its own.

Have kid, will write about it …

• Carolyn wrote an article for Time.com about the perils of going toy shopping with her daughter after having read Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In. The comments on this piece are almost more interesting than anything she actually said.

• Parents like Carolyn who blog and write about their kids might be doing them a disservice when it comes to protecting their privacy. She wrote an article for Time.com about the potential dangers of ‘over-sharenting’.

• Have you ever wondered what your kid’s teacher really thinks of you? No? Well, Carolyn did, and she set out to decode some of that ‘teacherese’ for Time.com.

• Are you the last parents on earth to wish that kids still called adults Mr. and Ms.? Carolyn asked the Emily Post Institute for some polite guidance for this Time.com column.

• Carolyn wrote about her personal experience of Texas’ sonogram law for Canadian magazine Chatelaine.

• Give a parent like Carolyn some inspection data and you’ll never hear the end of it. She wrote a blog post for the New York Times’ Motherlode blog about the tension between inspection findings versus gut instinct when choosing a daycare for her daughter.

• It gets blazingly hot in Texas and being stuck at home with a toddler is no fun. Carolyn tried her luck at an art gallery with mixed success, then described her findings in the Austin-American Statesman.

• Before she started writing about reproductive health, Carolyn blogged about being a mother. She keeps threatening to start blogging again. But just in case she doesn’t, here are the archives.

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