{"id":6,"date":"2011-04-26T22:17:15","date_gmt":"2011-04-26T22:17:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/?page_id=6"},"modified":"2015-10-15T12:41:36","modified_gmt":"2015-10-15T19:41:36","slug":"about-sandy-tolan","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/?page_id=6","title":{"rendered":"About Sandy Tolan"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Sandytolan1(3)\"<\/a>Sandy Tolan is a best-selling author, and an award-winning radio and print journalist who reports on and comments frequently about Palestine and Israel.\u00a0He is an associate professor at the University of Southern California (USC)\u2019s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism in Los Angeles.\u00a0 He is a co-founder of Homelands Productions, which for 25 years has produced international documentary and features for public radio.<\/p>\n

Sandy\u2019s latest book is\u00a0Children of the Stone: The Power of Music in a Hard Land<\/i><\/a> <\/i>(2015, Bloomsbury), about one Palestinian’s dream to build a music school in the midst of Israel\u2019s military occupation. He is the author of the international best-seller, The Lemon Tree<\/i><\/a>, an acclaimed history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.<\/p>\n

Work in the Field<\/b>
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Sandy is an award-winning radio and print journalist, and a recognized media expert and speaker on issues that affect the people of Palestine and Israel. Since 1982, he has reported from more than 30 countries and territories, including American Indian country, along the U.S.-Mexico border, across New England and the American West, South and East Asia, and specializing in the Middle East, Latin America, the Balkans and Eastern Europe. A central focus of his work has been the intersection of land conflicts, racial and ethnic identity, natural resources, and the global economy.<\/p>\n

Sandy writes currently for\u00a0the Los Angeles Times, Salon<\/em>, The Daily Beast, Truthdig, The Los Angeles Review of Books, <\/em>and\u00a0Al-Jazeera English<\/em>.\u00a0 He also maintains a blog at RamallahCafe.com, which chronicles daily life in the West Bank, with analysis and commentary from Los Angeles. He has produced dozens of acclaimed documentaries and features for National Public Radio (NPR) and Public Radio International (PRI), and has written for more than 40 newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times Magazine, the Los Angeles Times Magazine, the Christian Science Monitor, USA Today, and The Nation.<\/p>\n

Sandy is a co-founder of Homelands Productions, an independent production company focusing on documentary work for public radio. From 2011 to 2014, <\/em>Tolan and\u00a0his colleagues\u00a0<\/a>produced “Food for Nine Billion,” a multi-platform collaborative project for Marketplace, PRI\u2019s \u201cThe World\u201d and PBS NewsHour that examined the challenge of feeding the world at a time of growing demand and accelerating climate change.<\/p>\n

From 2007 to 2009, Sandy was a lead producer for the Homelands series, \u201cWORKING<\/a>,\u201d which produced monthly profiles on workers around the world broadcast on public radio\u2019s popular program, Marketplace.\u00a0 \u201cWORKING\u201d won the Sigma Delta Chi Award for radio feature reporting from the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), and individual awards from the Third Coast International Audio Festival and the New York Festivals. In 2003, Homelands began a new public radio series, \u201cWorlds of Difference: Local Culture in a Global Age<\/a>,\u201d expanding coverage into Africa and East Asia.<\/p>\n

Critically-Acclaimed Books
\n<\/b>
\nSandy is the author of three books:\u00a0 Children of the Stone: The Power of Music in a Hard Land <\/i><\/a>(2015, Bloomsbury), published in the U.S. and the U.K. to significant acclaim;\u00a0The Lemon Tree: An Arab, A Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East<\/span><\/em>, (2006, Bloomsbury), which has sold more than 250,000 copies worldwide, has earned numerous honors, and has been published in five languages; and Me and Hank, A Boy and His Hero 25 Years Later <\/i>(2000, Free Press), an exploration of race and sports in America, which the New York Times called a \u201csolid hit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Children of the Stone<\/em> grew out of two\u00a0radio stories\u00a0Sandy produced,\u00a0one in 1998<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0the other in\u00a02010<\/a>, about Ramzi Aburedwan, a young Palestinian viola player who realized his dream\u00a0of creating music schools for Palestinian children. The book has received international praise in the Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post Books, the Seattle Times, Ireland\u2019s The Journal of Music, and Newsweek Europe, and has been featured on NPR\u2019s \u201cWeekend Edition\u201d and on the BBC. Critics have called the book \u201ceye-opening,\u201d \u201cheart-rending,\u201d \u201criveting,\u201d \u201cuplifting,\u201d and \u201calive with compassion, hope, and great inspiration.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sandy joined Ramzi on a national \u201cChildren of the Stone\u201d musical and literary tour, accompanied by Ramzi\u2019s Dal\u2019ouna ensemble, at various venues across the country to promote cross-cultural sharing through the fusion of unique musical and literary works. The book was first launched in Los Angeles with a public reading at The Library Foundation of LA\u2019s ALOUD series in April, in which Sandy was joined in conversation by NPR correspondent and host, Kelly McEvers. He also discussed the book\u2019s message of hope through music at USC\u2019s Annenberg School, and at the Los Angeles Times\u2019 Festival of Books as part of a panel on empowering youth through the arts.<\/p>\n

His previous book,\u00a0The Lemon Tree, <\/i>was\u00a0based on his\u00a0award-winning documentary\u00a0<\/a>for NPR\u2019s \u201cFresh Air\u201d. The book was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle award, and won Booklist\u2019s \u201cTop of the List\u201d award in nonfiction as well as the 2006 Christopher Award for works \u201caffirming the highest values of the human spirit.\u201d The book also won honorable mention for the Sophie Brody Medal for Outstanding Achievement in Jewish Literature from the American Library Association.<\/p>\n

Teaching<\/b><\/p>\n

Sandy is an associate professor at the University of Southern California (USC)\u2019s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism in Los Angeles, Calif. where he teaches radio documentary and print journalism.\u00a0Since joining the faculty in 2008, he has led a number of in-depth, multimedia projects with his colleagues, students and professional partners on international migration, civil conflict, high school students, and low-wage labor for \u201cThe California Report\u201d (KQED), KCRW, Global Post, Fusion, and other renowned outlets.
\n<\/b><\/p>\n

In 2015, two such projects included, \u201cFar From Home,\u201d (with professor Marc Cooper) a series of stories<\/a>\u00a0told in text, video, audio, photos and infographics and published by Global Post and Fusion, and \u201cBetween Homelands\u201d (with Karen Lowe) for KQED\u2019s \u201cThe California Report\u201d about immigrants who have come to Los Angeles from other parts of the world, and are coping with issues of cultural identity. The series also airs on the Public Radio Exchange. \u00a0In 2010, Sandy’s USC Annenberg graduate students produced “Hunger in the Golden State<\/a>,” a 22-part, multi-platform series of radio, visual, and print stories in collaboration with\u00a0California Watch<\/i>\u00a0of the Center for Investigative Reporting.\u00a0 The series was broadcast and printed in news outlets statewide.<\/p>\n

From 2000 to 2007, Sandy\u00a0taught international reporting, radio feature and documentary classes at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley.\u00a0 For several years he coordinated the school\u2019s International Reporting Project. In 2006, the 11 student reporters in his \u201cEarly Signs\u201d climate change class, who produced an eight-part series, \u201cReports From a Warming Planet,\u201d for Salon.com and NPR\u2019s \u201cLiving On Earth\u201d won the prestigious George Polk Award. It was the first time students had been honored with the award.<\/p>\n

Awards and Honors<\/b><\/p>\n

Sandy has garnered more than 25 national and international journalism awards for his radio and print work, including: a DuPont-Columbia Silver Baton, three Robert F. Kennedy awards for reporting on the disadvantaged, a Harry Chapin World Hunger Year award, a United Nations Gold Medal award, and two honors from the Overseas Press Club.<\/p>\n

He served as a Hewlett Fellow on environmental reporting and as an I.F. Stone Fellow at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley in year 2003. He was a 1993 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.<\/p>\n

In 2006, his students at UC Berkeley won the prestigious George Polk Award<\/a> for their public radio series on the early signs of climate change \u2013 the first time students have received the honor.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Contact\u00a0<\/strong>
\n<\/b><\/p>\n

To stay current on Sandy’s latest projects, or to connect with Sandy about speaking engagements, click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sandy Tolan is a best-selling author, and an award-winning radio and print journalist who reports on and comments frequently about Palestine and Israel.\u00a0He is an associate professor at the University of Southern California (USC)\u2019s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism in Los Angeles.\u00a0 He is a co-founder of Homelands Productions, which for 25 years has more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1274,"href":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6\/revisions\/1274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}