Fernanda Santos

Fernanda Santos (born 1973) is a Brazilian-American writer,[1] journalism professor[2] and contributing columnist for The Washington Post[3] living in New York.[4] She is one of three writers of the musical ¡Americano!, which opened Off Broadway in the spring of 2022. Her first book, "The Fire Line: The Story of the Granite Mountain Hotshots," won the Western Writers of America 2017 Spur Award for Best First Nonfiction Book and was one of two finalists in the Contemporary Nonfiction category.[5]

Biography

Santos was born in Brazil and immigrated to the United States at the age of 24.[6] She received a master's degree in journalism from Boston University. Her husband, Mike Saucier, died of pancreatic cancer on Nov. 1, 2017, at the age of 46.[7] She has a daughter, Flora.

Career

Santos has written in English and Portuguese, for newspapers and magazines in the United States and Brazil.[8][9] She was the first Brazilian to work as a staff writer for The New York Times, where she worked for 12 years, most recently as its Phoenix Bureau chief.[10] She joined the faculty of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University on August 16, 2017[11] as a Southwest Borderlands Initiative professor of practice. She is a board member at the Arizona Latino Media Association[12] and The Sauce Foundation,[13] a 501c(3) created in the memory of her husband to raise money for pancreatic cancer research and journalism scholarships for first-generation college students. In her TEDx talk, "Hot Shot Teamwork," she talks about the nature of teams and the illusion of working alone.[14] She is part of the creative team behind "!Americano!",[15] a musical based on the real-life story of an undocumented immigrant from Arizona that will open at Phoenix Theater in January 2020.

Santos continues to write for various publications, in the United States and abroad. She has penned an essay about the meaning of citizenship[16] for Guernica Magazine and written a column for Mexico's Animal Politico about training journalists in the Mexican border city Ciudad Juárez to report more fairly on the migrant crisis.[17] Following the mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, in August 2019, she wrote an op-ed for The New York Times detailing why she no longer feels safe in the United States,[18] one of several op-eds she has written for The Times. In February 2021, she was named a contributing opinions columnist for The Washington Post, to “provide commentary on issues ranging from immigration to Southwest politics and more,” according to the announcement.[19] She won the Society of Professional Journalists’ Sigma Delta Chi Award for general excellence in column writing in 2021.

Book

Santos' book, "The Fire Line," tells the story of 19 firefighters killed in the Yarnell Hill Fire on June 30, 2013, all of them members of the same team, the Granite Mountain Hotshots. It was the largest loss of firefighters since the 9/11 attacks and the largest loss of forest firefighters in nearly a century. The book draws on her coverage of the fire for The New York Times. It was published by Flatiron Books in 2016. The Associated Press called it "a riveting and poignant narrative."[20] People Magazine said it "will keep you on the edge of your seat and break your heart."[21] The book is not connected with the movie "Only the Brave," Hollywood's adaptation of the deadly fire. One of the movie's main actors, James Badge Dale, who played the role of Captain Jesse Steed, said in interviews that it was Santos' stories that inspired him to join the film.[22][23][24] In his review of the movie, Richard Brody of The New Yorker points out the "bitter, more complicated, and more political" nature of the dispute between the firefighters and its employer, the City of Prescott, Arizona, detailed by Santos[25] yet not mentioned in the movie.[26]

References
  1. "Fernanda Santos | Authors | Macmillan". US Macmillan. Retrieved 2018-05-20.
  2. "Fernanda Santos, Southwest Borderlands Initiative Professor". Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. 2017-08-01. Retrieved 2018-05-20.
  3. "The Washington Post". The Washington Post.
  4. "LinkedIn", Encyclopedia of Social Media and Politics, 2455 Teller Road, Thousand Oaks California 91320 United States: SAGE Publications, Inc., 2014, doi:10.4135/9781452244723.n313, ISBN 9781452244716, retrieved 2023-08-29{{citation}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
  5. "WWA announces 2017 Spur Award winners « Western Writers of America". westernwriters.org. 11 March 2017. Retrieved 2018-05-20.
  6. "These Days, a Brazilian Expat 'Laughs So As Not to Cry'". The New York Times. 2016-05-25. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2018-05-20.
  7. "Michael Saucier's Obituary on Worcester Telegram & Gazette". Worcester Telegram & Gazette. Retrieved 2018-05-20.
  8. "Arizona nunca mais". epoca.globo.com. Retrieved 2018-05-20.
  9. Santos, Fernanda. "Election 2018 Preview | Valley News". Retrieved 2018-05-20.
  10. "Fernanda Santos". The New York Times. 2018-01-23. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2018-05-20.
  11. "NY Times correspondent named ASU Southwest Borderlands Initiative Professor". ASU Now: Access, Excellence, Impact. 2017-07-18. Retrieved 2018-05-20.
  12. "arizonalatinomedia". arizonalatinomedia. Retrieved 2018-05-20.
  13. "About Us". The Sauce Foundation. Retrieved 2018-05-20.
  14. TEDx Talks (2017-05-12), Hot Shot Teamwork | Fernanda Santos | TEDxTucsonSalon, retrieved 2018-05-20
  15. "Team". Americano The Musical. Retrieved 2019-10-28.
  16. Fernanda Santos (2019-02-19). ""The Best Kind of People": Shifting Definitions of Citizenship and the Making of Arizona". Guernica. Retrieved 2019-10-28.
  17. "La coherencia periodística y la cobertura del tema migratorio". Animal Político (in Spanish). 2019-07-23. Retrieved 2019-10-28.
  18. Santos, Fernanda (2019-08-10). "Opinion | I Felt Safe in America. Until El Paso". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-10-28.
  19. "The Washington Post names Fernanda Santos and Bill Whalen contributing opinion columnists". The Washington Post.
  20. "New book about Ariz. wildfire that killed 19 firefighters". NewsOK.com. 2016-05-02. Retrieved 2018-05-22.
  21. "People Magazine review" (PDF).
  22. "'Only the Brave' honors Arizona hotshots killed in 2013 fire". The Arizona State Press. Retrieved 2018-05-22.
  23. "Only the Brave Interview: James Badge Dale - We Write Things". We Write Things. 2017-10-22. Retrieved 2018-05-22.
  24. "We Express Our Love For James Badge Dale To James Badge Dale". UPROXX. 2017-10-17. Retrieved 2018-05-22.
  25. Santos, Fernanda (27 June 2014). "Money Splits a City Still Mourning Its Firefighters". The New York Times. Retrieved 2018-05-22.
  26. Brody, Richard (2017-10-23). "The Story That "Only the Brave" Leaves Out". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 2018-05-22.
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