Cynthia Gorney

Cynthia Gorney

Cynthia Gorney

Emeritus – Professor

Professor and former Associate Dean Cynthia Gorney first joined the faculty in 1999, after a career at The Washington Post that included serving as a national features writer and South America bureau chief. She left the School of Journalism faculty in 2015, to work for National Geographic Magazine as a contributing writer and editor, but is returning for the 2023 spring semester to teach in the narrative program. 

Gorney is the author of Articles of Faith: A History of the Abortion Wars, and has written for many magazines, including The New Yorker,  The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, and Sports Illustrated. She has also worked as a visiting Poynter Institute teacher, a newsroom writing coach, and a host/interviewer on “Forum,” the public affairs radio program on KQED-FM. She and her husband, labor attorney and SF State University lecturer Bill Sokol, live in Oakland. 

PUBLICATIONS & OTHER WORK

  • Selected work:

    National Geographic, June 2022 cover, on the science of human touch:
    https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/article/the-audacious-science-pushing-the-boundaries-of-human-touch-feature?loggedin=true&rnd=1669916758145

    New York Times Magazine, on mothers of deployed U.S. Marines:
    https://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/29/magazine/a-mothers-war.html

    National Geographic, on post-Fidel Cuba:
    https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/article/new-cuba

    99 Percent Invisible, on the disability activism story behind sidewalk curb cuts:
    https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/curb-cuts/

    The New Yorker, (designated a "classic" in their archives), on a pre-Dobbs effort to overturn Roe--which had a strongly right-to-life state re-examining what that truly meant:
    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/06/26/reversing-roe