Russell Morse is a native San Franciscan currently living in New York City. As a journalist, he has covered youth riots in France, juvenile justice reform in California, issues along the US/Mexico border and three presidential elections. His work has appeared in Rolling Stone Magazine and The San Francisco Chronicle and online at Salon.com and newamericamedia.org. The New York Times has called him “credibly hip but focused.”
While at Columbia University’s creative writing program, Morse published three books: Aztec Moon, a cholo time travel adventure; Dead Time, a science fiction jail memoir; and his lyric memoir, Holy Name, in which he explores how he became ensnared in the juvenile justice system, lost his girlfriend in a police shooting, his father to cancer, and courted death and danger on the streets of his native San Francisco.
In 2013, Morse was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Criminal Justice. He is currently employed by the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem, a public defense organization, where he prepares comprehensive mitigation biographies for people facing criminal prosecution. Morse was featured as Huffington Post’s “Person of the Day” for his work with homeless LGBT youth in New York City.
Russell is a 2018 John Jay Fellow.
