Storytellers

Anna Blackshaw is a writer, documentary photographer, and political activist whose first act of resistance was giving up grapes in support of striking farmworkers in California when she was ten years old. She worked in the California legislature as a consultant for many years on issues of international trade and democracy, prison reform, economic and racial justice, and gender equality. She has also lived and worked in South Africa as an advocate on issues of workers' rights, HIV/AIDS, and globalization. As a photographer, she has covered political issues and social justice movements in the U.S. and internationally, with a focus on communities struggling with the impacts of a changing global economy. She was the photographer for the the award-winning book, No More Strangers Now: Young Voices from a New South Africa. Her work has been published by the Los Angeles Times, the South African Mail and Guardian, The Sun, ColorLines, and the Independent Weekly. Professionally and personally she is drawn to the intersection of art, activism, and justice, using storytelling as a way to seek change, engender hope, and inspire action. She lives in an old mill town by the river with her partner, their seven-year-old son, and a playful black puppy named Stella.