Erin Aubry Kaplan is a journalist, columnist, author, blogger and teacher who has been writing about black issues since 1992. She has been a staff writer for the LA Weekly and an opinion columnist for the L.A. Times, the first African American to hold the position. She has contributed to many publications and nonfiction anthologies. Her collection of essays and reportage, Black Talk, Blue Thoughts and Walking the Color Line: Dispatches From a Black Journalista was published in 2011 by Northeastern University Press. Her second book, about the cultural legacy of Barack Obama, is due out in 2015.