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In this episode, I welcome back journalist and author Katya Cengel. We chat about her new non-fiction memoir, Straitjackets And Lunch Money, the importance of listening to children's voices, her time in a psychosomatic unit at a children's hospital when she was age ten, and how depression led her to not eating.

Katya Cengel is a freelance writer and author based in California. Her work has appeared in New York Times Magazine, Marie Claire, and the Wall Street Journal among other publications. She has reported from North and Central America, Europe, Asia and Africa and was based in the former Soviet Union for half a decade. She was a features and news writer for the Louisville Courier-Journal from 2003 to 2011.

She is the author of Eric Hoffer Academic Press 2023 award winner, Independent Publisher Book Award (IPPY) 2020 winner and Foreword Indies 2019 winner “From Chernobyl with Love: Reporting from the Ruins of the Soviet Union”; “Exiled: From the Killing Fields of Cambodia to California and Back” and “Bluegrass Baseball: A Year in the Minor League Life”. Her latest book is Straitjackets and Lunch Money.

She has been awarded grants from the International Reporting Project, the International Women’s Media Foundation and the International Center for Journalists. Her journalism has been recognized with a Society of Professional Journalists Green Eyeshade Award and a Society for Features Journalism Excellence-in-Features Award.

Katya Cengel
Straitjackets And Lunch Money, Katya Cengel

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