Claudia Melendez
Claudia Meléndez Salinas was born and raised in Puebla, Mexico. She earned an A.A. Degree in Sociology from Cabrillo College in Aptos, Calif., and a B.A. in Latin American and Latino Studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She began her journalistic career at El Andar, a bilingual publication for California's Central Coast that later became a national magazine. After graduating from UCSC, she worked for The Valley Morning Star in South Texas, El Financiero in Los Angeles, Nuevo Mundo in San José, California, The Salinas Californian and the Monterey Herald. Her writing has been published in La Jornanda, Latina Magazine, and other publications in the United States and Mexico. In 2017 she co-founded Voices of Monterey Bay, an internet magazine for California's central coast.
Meléndez Salinas' first book, A Fighting Chance, was published by Arte Público Press in 2015. A Fighting Chance is a fictionalized account of real events that took place in the mid 2000 in Salinas, Calif., when the city was struggling with funding and was trying to reduce services for youth. Meléndez Salinas attended her first NAHJ conference in Chicago more than 20 years ago as a member of the student project.