Carmen Kohlruss
Carmen’s favorite stories are narrative essays/features/profiles etc. that pair personal reflection with reporting. A career highlight was crafting this kind of creative nonfiction in The Fresno Bee’s features department, where she had a weekly column, Heart in the San Joaquin, that won a Best of the West in its first year.
Carmen has an affinity for stories that focus on our shared humanity. She also brings that human element into the more traditional news stories she often finds herself writing, digging into challenging issues to spotlight problems. Obsessive about writing and research, she dives deeply into a wide range of subjects with a Renaissance woman of news mentality in pursuit of bringing pertinent information to light in a way that resonates.
Over the past two years, her stories have been published in Sierra, Audubon, and Tricycle magazines, along with Good Beer Hunting, Civil Eats, Prism Reports, Livability, and Medscape. Carmen previously worked as a staff reporter and columnist for 14 years at several newspapers — The Fresno Bee, Sierra Star, and Montana Kaimin — before deciding to resign to take up freelance writing starting in early 2023, pursuing more of the storytelling she loves as a freelancer. Carmen's stories have appeared in dozens of newspapers, magazines and news websites throughout her career.
Carmen lives in Fresno, California, a wonderfully diverse city tucked into the agrarian central San Joaquin Valley. She grew up in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, the magnificent mountain range above that fertile valley. At age 17, she headed north in search of a good journalism school + more mountains and adventure, what she found as a print journalism major at the University of Montana in Missoula. She returned to California four years later to again live and write near Yosemite National Park, her muse since childhood and a central figure in many of her stories. (Carmen is also on a mission to go everywhere and know everything!) A love of discovery inspires the stories that come from her enthusiastic explorations.
Her storytelling is greatly enhanced by her favorite co-creator, Craig Kohlruss, a Fresno Bee staff photojournalist, videographer and drone pilot who also works as a freelancer. The duo became a CK team in 2021, when Carmen changed her byline from Carmen George to Carmen Kohlruss after they were married. She loves this wild, wonderful world dearly!
JOURNALISM AWARDS
Carmen's stories have been recognized by:
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California News Publishers Association’s California Journalism Awards
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McClatchy President’s Awards
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Indigenous Journalists Association’s National Native Media Awards
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Society of Environmental Journalists’ Awards for Reporting on the Environment
Carmen received several dozen awards — including more than 20 first, second or third place awards from the California News Publishers Association — in a wide range of contest categories, including:
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Writing / profiles / features / news / general interest column writing / environmental reporting / wildfire features / land-use reporting / public service journalism / sports features / investigative reporting / coverage of protests and racial justice news or feature stories / coverage of youth and education / coverage of local government / breaking news / COVID-19 pandemic profiles / photography / page layout and design
Newsrooms that Carmen worked in were also recognized with coveted General Excellence awards from the California News Publishers Association more than half a dozen times while she was on staff at The Fresno Bee and Sierra Star.
BEST OF THE WEST
Best of the West — a contest that draws entries from newspapers, magazines and online publications from the Rockies to Alaska and Hawaii, and does not divide categories by a publication’s circulation size — awarded Carmen second place in the category of general interest column writing.
Best of the West said Carmen “paints portraits of people with words. Through well-placed quotes and rich descriptions, she reveals subtleties of human behavior. Lovely prose and writing.” The contest honored her "Heart in the San Joaquin" columns. Her three entries told the stories of a Marine with two amputated legs cycling across America, a 102-year-old Fresno philanthropist who was friends with writer William Saroyan, and inmates who train shelter dogs.
~ More info about all of the awards is available here.
Carmen Kohlruss is a writer who is passionate about storytelling that connects people and initiates exploration to promote greater understanding. Her stories have received many journalism awards throughout her 16-year journalism career.
