“Chat Mouth”
Celeste Hamilton Dennis’s ten-year-old daughter calls her "chat mouth." That’s because she likes to talk, and likes to hear what you have to say. It goes without saying that it’s hard to leave parties.
Celeste grew up in Levittown, New York. She studied literature at Boston College and University College Dublin and after graduating, was faced with a choice: become a music journalist, or head to the Peace Corps in Guyana. She chose Guyana.
That started a decades-long career in nonprofit communications which took her to New York City, Buenos Aires, and Portland, Oregon. She worked for Idealist.org, where she wrote extensively about changemakers. Solutions journalism was the logical next step.
So she schelpped her family to the Bay Area to get her master’s from UC Berkeley journalism, where she studied with some of the best print and audio journalists around. Celeste’s children still don’t forgive her.
Now, she actively reports on responses to social issues—often at the intersection of mental health, aging, queer and gender justice issues. Her favorite stories are those that combine the unexpected.