Sonia Paul is an independent journalist, writer, producer and host. She teaches at Solano State Prison with KALW’s Uncuffed.

Uncuffed is an audio training program and podcast based in California prisons. Sonia trains incarcerated producers, edits stories for the radio and broadcast within the California prison system, and helps produce Uncuffed’s award-winning podcast.

As a journalist, she’s contributed to numerous outlets: Wired, Harper’s, Mother Jones, The Atlantic, National Geographic, Politico Magazine, NPR, The New York Times, The Guardian, Studio 360, 70 Million, BBC World Service, 99% Invisible, and more. She regularly appears on podcasts, panels and other events to discuss her work, including Vox’s Today Explained, NPR’s Here & Now, KQED’s Forum, The Bay, Our Body Politic and The Grand Tamasha. She also went on KQED’s Bay Curious to talk about SantaCon… (and the story she wrote about it) :).

Her story for Wired, “Trapped in Silicon Valley’s Hidden Caste System,” was honored with awards from the San Francisco Press Club and Religion News Association, and cited by the American Bar Association in its report encouraging legislation to ban caste discrimination. It inspired the BBC audio documentary, “The hidden caste codes of Silicon Valley,” which was excerpted on several podcasts and shows as California contended with a historic bill in the U.S. to outlaw caste bias.

Sonia and her work have received grants, fellowships, support and recognition from the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, South Asian Journalists Association, Asian American Journalists Association, Fund for Investigative Journalism, Religion News Foundation, Periplus Writing Collective, and International Women’s Media Foundation. She was also named a “Rising Star” and a senior fellow with the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism. A former board member of AAJA-SF, Sonia is currently a mentor on Soundpath, an initiative of the Association of Independents in Radio. She is a forthcoming resident at the Mesa Refuge.

Sonia lauched her career in journalism as a freelancer based in Lucknow, India. Previously, while teaching English in Japan on the JET program, she created, hosted and produced the grant-funded, community-based podcast Shizuoka Speaks. She earned her B.A. from UCLA with honors and also graduated with honors from Columbia Journalism School, where she studied as an Anne O’Hare McCormick Scholar. She’s based in California’s Bay Area, where she was born and raised.

If you’re interested in very occasional updates, her personal podcast and newsletter is Loitering, named after the “Why Loiter” movement fighting for women’s right to safe space. 

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This website showcases most of Sonia’s work; you can click on the hashtags to see stories by that topic. Please feel free to reach out with ideas, new opportunities, constructive criticism or a hello.

• @sonipaul on most social media,
• Signal: Ask,
• or fill out the form below.

P.S. The website’s cover photo is from a 2009 cycling trip through Japan’s Shimanami Kaido, a long expressway that connects Japan’s big island of Honshu to its smaller island of Shikoku through several small islands and bridges. This photo of the Kurushima-Kaikyō Bridge, the world’s longest suspension bridge, connects Shikoku with a tiny island called Ōshima. Sonia made the photo with a Kodak disposable film camera.