©Joanna Eldredge Morrissey
Beth Schwartzapfel is a journalist and writer specializing in long-form and narrative journalism. Her work has appeared in Mother Jones, the New York Times, the Nation, and Ms, among other newspapers and magazines. She covers a wide range of subjects, but has a specific interest in the criminal justice system, prisons and jails, and health care for the underserved and disenfranchised, particularly substance use, addiction, and HIV/AIDS. She has won numerous writing and journalism awards, including multiple Rhode Island Press Association Awards and Rhode Island for Community and Justice Metcalf Awards for Diversity in the Media. She is a fellow of the MacDowell Colony.
Beth earned a BA in English, with honors in Creative Writing, from Brown University, and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the New School. At the New School, her graduate thesis was a book-length work of narrative journalism about hepatitis C and addiction. Beth has taught at LaGuardia Community College and Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, Gotham Writers’ Workshop, and the New School. She has worked as a reporter at the Forward and as a fact checker at Esquire and StoryCorps. Before becoming a journalist, Beth worked as an outreach worker and educator at an HIV/hepatitis C clinic. She lived in Providence, RI, and then Brooklyn, NY, before moving to Jamaica Plain, MA, where she now lives with her partner, their son, and their lab-hound mutt.