Sarah Pollock

Sarah Pollock directs the undergraduate journalism program at Mills College, a women’s college in Oakland, Calif., where she is also a professor in the graduate program in creative writing.

An independent journalist, she has been senior editor at Mother Jones and editor in chief at Pacific Discovery, the former natural history magazine of the California Academy of Sciences, where she served on the editorial board for 15 years. Earlier, she was features editor at the Oakland Tribune and a staff writer at Newsday and the Hartford Courant. She has written articles, essays and book reviews for magazines and newspapers.

Pollock graduated summa cum laude from the University of California at Berkeley, where she studied English Literature and served as managing editor of The Daily Californian.  During her last two summers at Cal, she worked as an assistant editor for the Summer Program for Minority Journalists (now the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education) – and was inspired to go into journalism.

Her interests include women’s leadership and women’s education; the politics of gender equality; environmental issues; and the craft of literary non-fiction. Currently, she is focusing her energies on creating low-overhead, Luddite-friendly strategies for including digital/multimedia storytelling in journalism and creative writing courses.

“I love the multi-generational support and mentoring among women from college-age to post-retirement. We are all teaching and learning – and the JAWS culture of mutual respect is joyful, fearless and inspirational.”