Q: Hey Kara, what’s up with this “nerd for hire” thing?

A: I’m a journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. I particularly like to edit and write stories about science, or anything else that’s complicated and nuanced and sort of geeky or futuristic.

Q: What exactly does that mean?

A: Here are my bona fides, more or less in reverse order:

For four years, I was the science editor for WIRED. I edited every kind of science news there is: stories about health and biotech, neuroscience, climate and environment, energy, space, chemistry and materials science, robotics, physics, and urban design.

In 2015, I wrote a book about hacking sensory perception called We Have the Technology. Back then, the prospect of brain implants seemed super novel. Now, companies are racing to bring them to market.

I also really love teaching and working with emerging journalists. For 10 years, I taught classes at UC Berkeley's journalism school focused on narrative writing and reporting, on multi-platform story structure, and on East Bay coverage and innovative digital storytelling. I ran two student-powered local news sites, Oakland North and Richmond Confidential and produced a podcast, Tales of Two Cities, which covered news from Oakland and Richmond.

Before that, I spent two years as the senior editor for the environmental magazine Terrain, a project of Berkeley's Ecology Center.

And I started my reporting career as a staff writer at the East Bay Express, an alt-weekly newspaper in the San Francisco Bay Area. I covered just about everything — science and technology, medicine, crime, politics, in-depth profiles of interesting people. I like to tell people I worked the "Nancy Drew beat" — I'd pursue anything that involved a good mystery, an action adventure, and some fantastic characters.

Q: What else have you been up to?

A: I really enjoy public speaking and hosting interviews with scientists or my fellow nerdly reporters. You can check out some of those interviews here.

I also like working with nonprofits. I was a founding board member for the Office of Letters and Light, the Oakland-based arts and literacy non-profit that runs National Novel Writing Month. Every year a couple hundred thousand people from around the world attempt to write 50,000-word novels in the month of November, and thousands more attempt to write 100-page scripts in April.

Q: Who did that drawing of your head?

A: The fantastic Mike Smith.

Q: Are you open to new jobs, freelance editing or reporting gigs, or speaking invitations?

A: Heck yes!

Q: How can I reach you?

A: Email me at: karaplatoni [at] gmail [dot] com.


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