Farai Chideya has combined media, technology, and social justice during her 20-year career as an award-winning author and journalist. From 2006 to early 2009, she hosted NPR’s News and Notes, a daily national program about African-American and African diaspora issues. She and the teams she has worked with have won awards including a National Education Reporting Award, a North Star News Prize, and a special award from the National Gay and Lesbian Journalists Association for coverage of AIDS.

She has written three nonfiction books: Trust: Reaching the 100 Million Missing Voters; The Color of Our Future; and Don’t Believe the Hype: Fighting Cultural Misinformation About African Americans. All are taught on college campuses across the country, and The Color of Our Future has found an increasingly broad audience as America has become more diverse (and Americans more aware of our collective diversity). Her novel Kiss the Sky (Atria Books; May 2009) is Essence Magazine’s book club selection for May 2009.

Chideya also founded PopandPolitics.com in 1995. It is now one of the longest continuously operating blogs in the world.