About

The product of an Argentinean Jewish parent and a South African Jewish one, Deborah Stokol hails from and grew up in Los Angeles. She has always loved writing–stories, essays, articles, poetry, and music–as well as listening to music, playing music (she has played the piano for 21 years and has sung all her life), photography, criticism, film, dance, literature, art, philosophy, history, and religion.

She attended Harvard-Westlake School before pursuing a double major in English and Music at UC Berkeley. She spent a great deal of time with both her writing and music both in high school and college, playing and singing and writing and performing music for the school plays. She has a classical and jazz background in singing and in piano, graduating with high honors in Music. But she most loves to fuse many styles and pick out tunes by ear herself or make others up as she goes along, improvising for hours from a chord progression that intrigues her or that she has composed. It is rich harmony and wistful sounds that often move her most.

After college, she worked as an SAT tutor, as part of the K-Earth 101 Street Team, playing piano for an LA-based synagogue, taking an orchestration class at UCLA, as an intern at Los Angeles Magazine, and then for the Los Angeles Times’ online and print Calendar section(s).

She received a Master’s in Journalism at USC’s Annenberg School of Communication & Journalism, earning the Director’s Award for Excellence upon commencement.

She is fluent in Spanish and at least used to be proficient in Italian and has worked as a journalist (both in English and in Spanish) either full time or on a freelance basis for Spot.Us, Pop and Politics, La Opinion, The Berkeley Poetry Review, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Magazine, The News and Observer, L’Atelier, New America Media, WitnessLA, LAist, as well as as one of the co-founders and editors/columnists of USC’s only online news site, Neon Tommy.

As she cares very much about kids, literature, writing, and education, teaching seemed like the logical next step. She has taught English, Journalism, and Health at Harvard-Westlake, the Urban Media Foundation, and Shalhevet High School.

At present, she works full-time at The Bishop’s School, having designed her own courses and having taught English and Writing at the 8th and 11th grade levels during the 2010-2011 school year before teaching 9th grade, Journalism, and heading the school newspaper, The Tower, now.

She is also working on a collection of short stories, essays, and poetry and would like to record an accompanying album.

Passionate about traveling and coffee shops, she has visited more than 20 countries and has lived or spent considerable amounts of time in Los Angeles, Berkeley, San Francisco, and New York and currently resides in San Diego, intimately acquainting herself with the cafes of each.

“Debrief”, a play on her name as well as on the site’s function, is a blog and a showcase of some of her essays, criticism, music, thoughts on Los Angeles, long form pieces, stories, photography, and poetry. She hopes you enjoy it and will return soon!

Awards:

Carnegie and Knight-Foundations News 21 Multimedia Reporting Fellowship (2009)

USC Annenberg School of Communication & Journalism Director’s Award for Excellence (2009)

UC Berkeley Magna Cum Laude, Music (2006)

A.P. Scholar (2002)

National Merit Scholarship Candidate (2001)

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Web site design by Deborah Stokol. Full Web site construction by Jim Wayne. Header image, Paul Klee’s “The Goldfish.” All songs recorded  in 2000 by Noah Levin. Those from 2001 were recorded at the Colburn School in Downtown Los Angeles. Those from 2006-2007 by Jackson Jordan Cone. All dating from 2009 onward by Deborah Stokol.