Sea Change: a weekly column with stories about evolution and grit through life’s challenges
by creative nonfiction writer and freelance journalist Katie Burke, author of Urban Playground and longtime San Francisco resident.
Welcome to Sea Change, a weekly column I launched in 2024 to share my musings of life in San Francisco, the city where I’ve lived since 1999; to feature women and nonbinary people who surf, whose stories I’ve wanted to tell since I became a surfer in 2022; and to present readers with various unique people doing fascinating things.
While the first handful of Sea Change posts were surfer features, this column is not always about surfing or even the sea. Here, I use “sea change” as a play on words: women and nonbinary people who surf demonstrate grit through life’s challenges, and more than anything else, my writing is about tenacity, creativity, connection, and power in the face of change.
Sea Change was initially going to be a book. In April 2020, SparkPress published Urban Playground, my book featuring fifty San Francisco children ages five to nine about growing up in the city. In July 2022, I interviewed roughly the same number of women and nonbinary people who surf, envisioning a book to challenge the Jeff Spicoli surfer stereotype and show readers the women and nonbinary people I’d met who were regularly surfing around the world.
But at heart and by background, I am a column and short features writer. Much of my writing has focused on San Francisco life, and for two years, I wrote a Noe Valley Voice column featuring children in San Francisco’s Noe Valley neighborhood whom I’d interviewed. Years ago, one of my mentors called me a “municipal reporter,” which is the best description of my writing style I’ve heard to date.
Having the flexibility to write and post a new story every week—sometimes related to surfing and other times featuring my “municipal observations,” so to speak—enables me to focus my writing on this column.
I hope my posts inspire you to be bold in the world. Whether you travel on sea or by land, may your contributions be courageous.
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