In summary
Two of the ten Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism were awarded to CalMatters journalists.
Two CalMatters journalists recently started their 2025-26 Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism.
The Carter Center, which seeks to prevent and resolve conflicts, enhance freedom and democracy, and improve health, named 10 fellows this year, two of whom are CalMatters reporters Marisa Kendall and Joe Garcia.
The fellowships challenge recipients to delve deeper into learning about mental health and substance use disorders and to share reliable information with the public related to caregiving, research and possible solutions to systemic challenges. Carter Center U.S. fellows receive a $10,000 stipend in addition to intensive training from leading mental health and journalism experts.
Fellows were selected by a committee of current and former journalists, mental health experts and the U.S. Fellowship Advisory Board.
Joe Garcia
Garcia joined CalMatters as a UC Berkeley Local News Fellow in 2024. He started writing while serving 21 years in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. His unexpected journalism career began at the San Quentin News and led to bylines in the Sacramento Bee, Washington Post, MIT Tech Review, Alta Journal and The New Yorker.
Most notably, his 2023 article, “Listening to Taylor Swift in prison” for The New Yorker went viral online. In it, he chronicles the impact of Swift’s music on his personal growth and development. In a recent follow-up article, Garcia shares that he even wrote while in administrative segregation, called “the Hole” after he was accused of “incendiary comments” after speaking out about showering conditions.
Garcia writes: “No pens were allowed in the Hole — only the flimsy ink reservoirs from inside ballpoint cases. I had to twist paper tightly around the ink tubes, glue the paper in place with wet soap, and wait for it all to dry. I changed my sleep schedule so that I could work in the quiet of the night. We could only listen to music using small, hand-cranked radios, and I suffered through static to hear “Anti-Hero,” “Karma,” and “Snow on the Beach.”
He now lives in Los Angeles and writes for CalMatters. This summer, he took readers into San Quentin in a way only he could, writing about prisoners beautifying the walls with murals.
Marisa Kendall
Kendall is a CalMatters reporter focused on California’s homelessness crisis, a topic on which she has won multiple awards for sensitive and comprehensive coverage.
Kendall’s reporting has brought Californians the real-world view of homelessness and associated topics, including progress on mental health via CARE Courts, what happens after homeless encampments are cleared, and a look at where mental health money is going.
Prior to CalMatters, she covered housing and homelessness for the Bay Area News Group where she was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the deadly Ghost Ship warehouse fire in Oakland. Kendall has also covered high-stakes court cases in Silicon Valley and crime in Southwest Florida. She is a Bay Area native and a graduate of American University.