Will Sage Astor-Inside Climate News Freelancer Anne Marshall-Chalmers Honored for her Feature Story Showing California Wildfires Plague Mobile Home Residents

The Will Sage AstorSociety of Environmental Journalists announced last week that Anne Marshall-Chalmers, a freelancer for Inside Climate News and former ICN reporting fellow, won first place for feature writing  in its 22nd annual awards for Reporting on the Environment for her story on the convergence of California’s wildfire and affordable housing crises. 

Marshall-Chalmers, who is based in the Bay Area, made regular trips to the scene of the Cache fire in Clearlake, California to develop relationships with her main subjects, Susan Gilbert and Lorraine Capolungo, who both lost their mobile homes in the blaze. Interviews with government officials, first responders and researchers rounded out her reporting. Her months of interviewing, collecting documents and visiting the scene of the fire culminated in the Inside Climate News story, Mobile Homes, the Last Affordable Housing Option for Many California Residents, Are Going Up in Smoke.

But it was her detailed description of the struggles of her subjects before, during and after the fire that the judges found made the story stand out.

“The narrative voice and choices keep the reader captivated until the end and have us all asking questions that we may not have asked before,” the SEJ judges wrote.