JOURNALIST. AUTHOR. Teacher.

Terry Greene Sterling is a journalist, author and teacher. She grew up on an Arizona cattle ranch, and often visited her family in Sonora. Because her family was rooted in two cultures, she has long written about the people, policies and landscapes of the borderlands. A conversational Spanish speaker, she is a three time Arizona Journalist of the Year and the winner of over 60 international, national and regional writing and reporting honors. She’s the co-author of Driving While Brown: Sheriff Joe Arpaio versus the Latino resistance, published by the University of California Press in April, 2021, and the the author of Illegal, Life and Death in Arizona’s Immigration War Zone, published by Globe Pequot Press in 2010.

For reviews, events and contact information for Driving While Brown, a 2021 NPR Books We Love selection, and the winner of an Investigative Reporters and Editors award, a Southwest Book of the Year award, three New Mexico Arizona book awards, and a Best of Phoenix award, click here.

Terry’s bylines have appeared in The Washington Post, Newsweek, The Daily Beast, The Atlantic, Slate, Village Voice, The Guardian, High Country News, Arizona Highways, Phoenix New Times, The Arizona Republic, The Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, palabra, Salon.com and many other publications.

She is editor at large for the Arizona Center of Investigative Reporting and a Pulitzer fellow.

She’s presented for Investigative Reporters and Editors and the Poynter Institute, and has been invited to speak at numerous colleges, universities, think tanks, libraries and on podcasts, public radio and television.

She taught journalism from 2003 to 2022 at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. At Cronkite, she directed the Borderlands digital reporting team for Cronkite News, and has taught Magazine Writing, Reporting, Sustainability Writing, Depth Reporting, Food and Media and Reporting on Indigenous Communities, which she co-taught with Indian Country Today editor Mark Trahant.  

She lives in the desert near Phoenix with her husband and a white dog that eats carrots.

Join her @tgsterling on Twitter.