Tom Avila is a contributing writer to Metro Weekly [1] news magazine and a staffer for the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association [2] (NLGJA).

Prior to coming to NLGJA, Avila was the Staff Director of the Committee of Concerned Journalists (CCJ). During his six-year tenure with the CCJ, Avila’s focus was the coordination of the organization’s outreach activities and administrative oversight of The Traveling Curriculum.

From 2004 until 2006, Avila was also researcher/writer on the subject of radio for the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s (PEJ) comprehensive State of the News Media annual report. The inaugural edition of State of the News Media earned PEJ a Sigma Delta Chi award and Penn State University’s Bart Richards’ award.

He holds a BFA degree in Crafts from The University of the Arts (Philadelphia, PA) and an MFA degree in Creative Writing from American University. Avila’s fiction writing has been honored by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and his theater criticism earned him a place as a 2008 NEA Arts Journalism Institute Fellow for Theater & Musical Theater.

The opinions expressed in his essays are his own and not those of his employer.

• New Yorker Started a Joke, Which Started the Whole Blogosphere Yelping [3]                                                            July 18, 2008

• Common Ground: I Say Potato, You Say Farm-Raised Organic Arugula [4]                                                                          June 27, 2008

• Same-Sex Marriage and Civility: Am I Talking to Myself? [5]                                                                                   May 16, 2008     

• Boys Who Were Girls Who Are Boys Who Like Girls … [6]
  April 18, 2008

• An Evangelical and a Cabaret Singer Walk Into a Bar … [7]
  Feb. 22, 2008

• And An Animated Snowman Will Lead Them [8]
  December 27, 2007

• The F-Word...No...Not That One... [9]
  November 23, 2007

• What I Meant to Say [10]
  October 18, 2007

• Choosing Sides [11]
  September 20, 2007

• The Role of the Citizen [12]
  March 1, 2004