I was born in Colorado and got my BA in English from Colorado State University. I moved to California, where I received my MA with honors in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University and became a full-time writer.

In no particular order, I believe in, and write about:

In the early days, I wrote for music magazines (Puncture, Option, Magnet, Ray Gun, huH) and local arts papers – SFWeekly and San Francisco Bay Guardian – and sold my reviews and musical news features to the SF Gate and Pink Section of the San Francisco Chronicle.

With the launch of Wired, I began to contribute CD reviews, short articles and, eventually, interviews and features to the magazine, on everything from Negativland and Björk to Internet gaming and visual art. Wired hired me as a contributing editor, and through my connections there I also wrote music and travel pieces for HotWired and various projects for Wired Books. Under my editorship, I produced Wired Presents: Music Futurists, a CD for Rhino Records. In the mid-1990's, my work at Wired was nominated for a Music Journalism Award.

But I had other interests. I wrote two early Internet books for Sybex: A Pocket Tour of Music on the Internet (1995) and A Pocket Tour of Celebrities on the Internet (1996); these were translated into Japanese, Greek, Russian, Portuguese, Indonesian, and Chinese. I also wrote and edited two San Francisco travel guides for Time Out – Time Out San Francisco 1998 and 2000 (Penguin). I also contributed to bOING bOING's The Happy Mutant Handbook (Riverhead) and published a series of technology columns in the Newark [NJ] Star-Ledger.

Beginning in the late 1990's, I was hired to write and edit business content for a number of companies, including Wells Fargo Bank, Sun Microsystems, Inc., HP, Modulant Solutions, Center for the Future of China, White Rabbit Virtual, Ninth House Networks, and many others. My client list continues to grow every year.

I grew more interested in visual culture and fine art, and was invited to write for Print, the New York-based graphic design magazine, where I became a contributing editor. (Print has won the National Magazine Award for general excellence five times, most recently in 2009.) I wrote about graffiti, public, emerging, and "alternative" art – stuff that had always intrigued me. I also wrote for LINE, Art Papers, Art Connoisseur, Sphere and, eventually, eDesign, Surface, I.D., Artweek (where I was a contributing editor before the magazine folded), CMYK, the AIGA's Voice, and Preservation, the official magazine of the National Historic Trust.

Along the way, I've published my  short stories and memoirs in a variety of places, including: Transfer, On the Page, Tiny Lights (where my memoir, "Chew," was nominated for a Pushcart Prize), and The Dickens literary magazines; the Zebulon Nights anthology, and the Fresh California Oranges and Other True Life Stories anthology (Trafford, 2005). I've read my work to live audiences at KGB Bar in Manhattan; the Sonoma County Book Fair in Santa Rosa; and the LiveWire Literary Salon in Petaluma. I've also read commentaries on KQED Public Radio and on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered."

Speaking of radio, I've produced and sold a number of reported pieces, CD reviews, and commentaries to different radio entities including "All Things Considered" and KQED's "The California Report" (where a segment I wrote and co-produced won a RTNDA Award). I was a contributing producer for "Word By Word," an NEA-supported literary program on KRCB-FM.

Topic-wise, I like to keep in motion: I've sold cooking features to Delicious Living, technology stories to Golf Journal, and independent film reviews to Entertainment Weekly. I've written essays in anthologies edited by Steven Heller and published by Allworth: Education of a Comics Artist; Education of a Graphic Designer (2nd. ed.); and most recently Design Disasters. I write for Chronicle Books – most recently On Tender Hooks: The Art of Isabel Samaras. "Urban Emigrants" was a series for the SF Gate, and I published a memoir in the fine Make magazine, which they released as a podcast.

I've appeared as a guest at conferences, panels, and programs, including Comic Con, American Public Media's "Marketplace" program; SummerFest La Jolla; HANG gallery's "Business of Online Art"; as a speaker at the 2004 HOW Design Conference; Sonoma State University's "State of the Arts" panel series; the Sonoma County Book Festival (2003, 2004, 2005); on KQED's "Forum" and KRON 4's "News Weekend" with Henry Tenenbaum. I've guest-lectured and workshop-facilitated writing classes at Loyola Marymount University, San Francisco State University, UC Berkeley Extension, and the California College of Art.

When I'm not working, I love to travel, hike, practice yoga, ride my bike, and relax with close friends. I'm a decent amateur cook and an avid reader, favoring contemporary fiction, autobiography, and books on budding spiritually. I'm a leader-in-training  for The ManKind Project (MKP is a nonprofit organization that helps men live lives of integrity). I moved to Los Angeles in 2009.

© Colin Berry, colinberry.com.