susana ferreira at the san ysidro border crossing, photo by marie arago

I’m a journalist, writer, producer, and editor. Some of my favourite long print and audio pieces are collected here. I worked previously as a music critic, then as an international correspondent, stringer, and freelance reporter for Reuters, TIME, PRI, CBC, Wall Street Journal, France 24, and others, including four years based in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. More recently I’ve tuned to a slower practice of journalism, sitting with complicated narratives, storytelling through tangles. “Decriminalization: A Love Story,” a work of literary reporting about the intimate forces behind Portugal’s approach to their overdose crisis, went viral when it was republished by The Guardian in late 2017. It continues to be actively cited and used around the globe to facilitate public debate around drug use, drug policy, harm reduction, and policing.

My writing and reporting have been supported by awards, fellowships, grants, and residencies from MacDowell, NYU’s Matthew Power Literary Reporting Award, Black Mountain Institute, Banff Centre, Artscape Gibraltar Point, Disquiet International, Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, International Reporting Project, International Women’s Media Fund, and Pulitzer Center. My longform stories have been translated into French, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish.

I’m interested in borders and belongings, and the spaces in between. I was born in Canada to immigrants from Portugal and raised by West End Toronto, within the treaty lands and territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. These days I’m spending time in and around the Atlantic, finishing a PhD, unravelling a book.

My email address is susanaferreira at pm dot me.

If you’d like to communicate more privately and securely and don’t know how, I suggest you begin by opening a free ProtonMail account. Emails sent between PM accounts are protected by end-to-end encryption.

I’m @susana on Keybase. I use
Wire and Signal – please ask for my contact.

Photo from the San Ysidro/El Chaparral borderland by Marie Arago.