ABOUT ERIKA

Storytelling is looking someone in the eye and making a human connection. And then another, and another. And another. It is the best way I know to feel a little less alone in this world, and I strive as a journalist and human to build more of those connections. 

I spent most of my career as a reporter on the East Coast, but my heart has always been in the West. In 2017, I returned to my home state of Oregon, after my father was diagnosed with dementia. I now live in Portland, Ore., with my husband and our dog, Mojie, in a 124-year-old foursquare house with a bright pink door.

I'm the author of Windfall, a narrative nonfiction book published in 2023 by Sourcebooks. Windfall was a 2024 finalist for the Oregon Book Awards. Set on the prairies of North Dakota. Windfall begins with a mysterious email that arrives from my mother shortly before her death, saying she'd inherited mineral rights. I set out at the height of the oil boom to unearth the story behind the bequest, in search of the source of the whispers heard on the Great Plains: We could be rich.

When I'm not reporting or writing, you'll find me on my yoga mat or teaching a yoga class. To me, yoga and journalism are both about spreading light, shifting perspective and above all, making human connections.  

A little more about me….

I report from the West for Stateline, and before that, wrote about climate change adaptation in the United States for E&E’s Climatewire. In that job I traveled the country covering the intersection of politics, science, business and culture, with an emphasis on how people across America are coping with climate change in their neighborhoods. 

Before that, I was a reporter in the McClatchy Washington Bureau, where I wrote about environmental issues and served as the Washington correspondent for the Miami Herald. I also spent four years in the bureau covering Washington for the Anchorage Daily News and the Idaho Statesman. My work on the Larry Craig scandal for the Statesman was a finalist for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news.

At the Miami Herald, I covered politics, the state legislature, local government and hurricanes — including Hurricane Katrina from New Orleans. I got my start as a journalist at the News & Record in Greensboro, N.C., and The Item in Sumter, S.C.

In March 2020, I completed a master’s degree in multimedia journalism at the University of Oregon. In 2022, I was the recipient of an environmental arts grant from the Anonymous Was a Woman Foundation. The grant supported a companion short film to Windfall. The film, To Be Rich, was a selection in 2023 and 2024 of the San Francisco Green Film Festival, the Wild & Scenic Film Festival, the McMinnville Short Film Festival, and the Catalyst Film Collective’s RISE community film showcase.