Karen Grigsby Bates
Karen Grigsby Bates is the Senior Correspondent for Code Switch, a podcast that reports on race and ethnicity. A veteran NPR reporter, Bates covered race for the network for several years before becoming a founding member of the Code Switch team. She is especially interested in stories about the hidden history of race in America—and in the intersection of race and culture. She oversees much of Code Switch's coverage of books by and about people of color, as well as issues of race in the publishing industry. Bates is the co-author of a best-selling etiquette book (Basic Black: Home Training for Modern Times) and two mystery novels; she is also a contributor to several anthologies of essays. She lives in Los Angeles and reports from NPR West.
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While African Americans constitute only 13 percent of the population, they account for more than 40 percent of missing persons. Find Our Missing on black cable network TV One wants to be the catalyst for tips that might solve a disappearance.
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In Power Concedes Nothing, civil rights attorney Connie Rice describes brokering peace between the Los Angeles Police Department and minority populations. -
In a nation where child obesity rates are soaring, some parents are turning to a boarding school that focuses on both weight loss and academics. The goal: to rewire students' eating and exercise habits to ensure they live long and healthy lives. The kids find it a challenge — but totally worth it. -
In The Barbarian Nurseries, Hector Tobar explores the inconsistencies in the country's dependence on illegal immigrants even as some Americans persist in keeping them at arm's length.
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Fifteen years after she led the prosecution against O.J. Simpson in one of the most public trials of the century, Marcia Clark returns to the courtroom. But this time, it's to make her fiction debut as the writer of a new legal thriller novel, Guilt by Association.. -
The South and West may become the Rust Belts of the 21st century, according to a new study from the Mortgage Bankers Association. It says the economies in these regions — in places like California and Florida — may never fully recover from the burst of the housing bubble. -
The protagonist of Naomi Hirahara's novels isn't a seasoned police detective or a private investigator — he's a gruff, 72-year-old gardener who lives in the hills above Pasadena, Calif. The Mas Arai character was inspired by Hirahara's father and guides readers into the hidden corners of L.A.'s Japanese-American communities. -
The prolific and perennially controversial celebrity biographer takes a look at the life of a talk show host who doesn't much like to be talked about. Not surprisingly, Kelley's latest bio is entirely unauthorized. -
Elsie Washington, who died last month, is hailed as the Barack Obama of romance writers. Colleagues say she showed that publishing novels with worldly black characters was possible. She established a precedent that influenced the genre over the past 20 years.
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The new film Angels & Demons revolves around a group whose name has become synonymous with shadows and global conspiracy: the Illuminati. But how big — and how bad — are they really?
