Jessica reporting in Hidroituango Dam (Photo by Mariana Greif)

Jessica Camille Aguirre is an American writer based in Germany who focuses on narrative journalism.

The decision of becoming a writer came through her love for reading as a kid. Books made her feel connected to the world and allowed her to visit different moments in time. Eventually, this happened too with narrative journalism and literary non-fiction, where she has found new ways to connect through space and time, and built up a world that people can enter too.

She initially pursued the career in journalism because it felt like a useful tool to hold people to account and to give power to those who don’t have necessarily a stake in specific processes to objectively to try to asses and analyze, whether those processes are happening in a way that it hears to the ethics that the society has.

For her, journalism allows us to learn more about the world we live in and don’t understand, while at the same time teaching us how much is unknown, and how little can we ever really know, making this process of trying incredibly rewarding.

Her work is mostly focus on environment and social justice, the human relationship of humans and nature, commodities and natural resources. She finds this type of stories especially appealing because they tend to be unexamined in terms of human impact.

Something that really caught my attention me and I agree with, is that for her, climate change has become the story of our time. So, one of the most interesting professional challenges for Jessica is to try to tell the story of climate change in a way people can relate to that is not too apocalyptic, bus also conveys the sense of urgency that needs to be conveyed.

Talking to Jessica and knowing what an avid reader she was, I asked her too for any female writers she could recommend us. Firstly, she really recommends the work of Alma Guillermo Prieto who has written a lot for the New York Review of Books and was also a New Yorker writer for a long time and has covered Latin America. And secondly, the classic yet incredibly talented Joan Didion who has become a must-read for several of us.

I thank Jessica for her time and suggest you follow her wonderful work closely. (http://jessicacamilleaguirre.com/)

Jessica and Mariana visiting the Hidroituango Dam.