Chideya was a member of the improv comedy troupe
The Immediate Gratification Players. In 2000, she was distinguished as the most honored alumna from Harvard. Her academic life includes being a professional in residence at the Graduate School of Journalism at the
University of California at Berkeley and a visiting professor at the Annenberg School of Communication at the
University of Southern California, in addition to her current position as distinguished writer in residence at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University. Chideya is also the founder and president of one of the earliest pop culture blogs in the US,
PopandPolitics.com. During the 15 years of its existence,
PopandPolitics.com was a training ground for young arts and culture journalists. In addition to her radio, video and online journalism, Chideya appears as a political analyst on
CNN,
MSNBC,
CNBC,
ABC News,
Fox News,
BET and
HBO. She began working as a senior writer for the website
FiveThirtyEight in 2015, covering issues including the 2016 presidential election. In May 2009,
Atria Books published Chideya's first novel,
Kiss the Sky, which details the life of a black female rock musician making a career comeback in New York. The book takes place just months before
9/11 and is rooted in the ethos of the Black rock movement and the New York club scene. Chideya is also part of The Finish Party writing group, and is the author of three non-fiction books about race and politics: ''Don't Believe the Hype
, The Color of Our Future
and Trust: Reaching the 100 Million Missing Voters''. Prior to 2009, Chideya was the host of the
National Public Radio radio program
News & Notes. Before that, she hosted
Your Call, a daily radio call-in show on San Francisco, California's
KALW public radio. She got her start in journalism working for
Newsweek magazine,
MTV News, the
Oxygen network and the non-profit community news website, The Beehive. She has subsequently written pieces for
The New York Times, the
Los Angeles Times Syndicate, the
Chicago Tribune Syndicate,
The American Prospect, the
San Francisco Chronicle,
Time,
O, The Oprah Magazine,
Vibe,
Spin and
Glamour. From 2014 to 2015, Chideya produced and hosted
One with Farai, a podcast for
Public Radio International (PRI), in which she interviewed distinguished individuals with a range of stories and opinions, including
Melissa Harris-Perry,
Urvashi Vaid, and
Alec Ross. Chideya is the recipient of a Foreign Press Center fellowship that took her to Japan in 2002, a
Knight Foundation fellowship based at
Stanford University in 2001 and a Freedom Forum Media Studies Center fellowship in 1996. She has won various awards for her work: a special award from the Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for AIDS reporting in 2008; an Enterprise reporting award from the
National Association of Black Journalists for a piece on Skid Row in 2007; a North Star Award for covering communities of color in 2006; a distinguished honoree award from the Black Entertainment and Telecommunications Association in 2004; a MOBE IT Innovator Award and an Alternet New Media Hero award for
PopandPolitics.com in 2001;
New York Public Library's Best Books for Teens for
The Color of Our Future in 2000; a WIN Young Women of Achievement Award in 1996; a
GLAAD Award from
Spin in 1995; and a National Education Reporting Award and an EdPress award for education reporting done for
Newsweek in 1994. Her speeches on civic engagement, electoral politics, digital media, hip-hop, race and politics have taken her around the world—from India to South Africa to Alaska.
Syracuse University, the
University of Southern California, the
California African-American Museum in Los Angeles,
M.I.T., the
University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, the
University of Chicago, Stanford University, the University of California at Berkeley,
Louisiana State University, De Anza Community College, the
University of Alaska at Fairbanks,
Wellesley College,
Chicago State University,
Harvard University and
Smith College are just some of the places where she has spoken. Chideya served as a judge for the 2023
American Mosaic Journalism Prize. ==Bibliography==