Biography of Kate Coleman
Author of "The Secret Wars of Judi Bari"
By Mary Moore (12/16/2004)

Kate Coleman had a peripatetic upbringing in New Jersey, New York, Florida and California before graduating from the University of California at Berkeley in 1965 with a B.A. in English and the humanities and a minor in radical, student, Berkeley politics of the day.

She became a young staffer at Newsweek in New York where her political and cultural acumen enabled her to scoop the competition with stories such as the Youth International Party plans for disrupting the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention. Dropping out in late '68, Kate traveled across Europe, Africa and parts of Asia on the cheap, then relocated back to Berkeley where she became a freelance journalist in print and on TV.

Coleman wrote for many hip, sassy west coast magazines such as New West/California, Women' s Sports, Scanlon's and Ramparts, along with many Sunday magazine sections of national newspapers. But it was her New Times investigation of the Black Panther Party with Paul Avery that established Coleman's reputation as a scrupulous reporter, keen analyst, and gutsy investigative reporter. Coleman has been an all-purpose journalist and writer, as at home in first person humor, sex and sport op-ed pieces as she is in feature length profiles of celebrities and notables like Jane Fonda, Michael Douglas, Zsa Zsa Gabor or Rosemary Leary; politicos Ronald Reagan loyalist, Ed Meese, former NOW president Ginny Foat, to name a few – and outsider groups such as the past lives cult favored by thanatologist Elizabeth Kubler Ross. She's also covered issues ranging from women with guns, Prop 209, the affirmative action amendment in California, and the Oakland school "ebonics" controversy. However, her specialty has been chronicling the left and counter-cultures that she's understood from being, if not in their midst, than close enough to dig up good sources and take pains to be a fair and accurate observer.

A dedicated truth seeker, Coleman is a progressive who understands and calls to account the posturing of both left and right sides of the political spectrum. While working as a scribe, she has tried to avoid taking a real job, choosing instead over the years to teach writing at the University of California at Santa Cruz or moonlight as maitre d' at Berkeley's famed Chez Panisse Cafe.

A competitive swimmer, Coleman is currently training for the frigid Alcatraz-to-San Francisco New Year's Day swim. Her only regret: as yet no one has seen fit to pay a salary to a middle-aged jock!

Click here for a review of Coleman's book, "The Secret Wars of Judi Bari."

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