Witness is a storytelling project anchored in people’s lived experiences of immigration, with a focus on detention, its human impacts, and community responses
Autor Enrique Gijón; Título: Plancha Matriz
Click to View Story
Vision Statement
Through humanizing storytelling, we inspire readers and leaders to enact sensible immigration policies and practices.
Our Values
Anchored in people's lived experiences, Witness is committed to our core values:
Trustworthiness
Witness is dedicated to exploring lived experience and policy contexts through high quality story development.
Immigrant Leadership and Voices
Community-led storytelling relies on the active participation of impacted community members at all levels of production.
Contributor Equity
Witness actively invites and prioritizes submissions by creators of all ages, abilities, languages, identities, and backgrounds. We pay equitable rates to all contributors regardless of geography, background, or professional trajectory.
Partnership
Witness relies upon respectful, creative partnership and collective decision-making.
Accessibility
Witness makes stories and resources clear and accessible across language, culture, abilities, and medium.
History
As a deliberately interdisciplinary collective, we engage and inform readers through accessible artistic expression, participatory media, and solidarity journalism. We center immigrant voices in leadership and creative works, commissioning a wide range of artists, writers, and translators to produce stories that spark conversation and connection.
Witness is the result of conversations and collaborations (and even a few potlucks) that began in July 2025 among Pittsburgh-area writers, artists, and community leaders committed to supporting local immigrant communities and producing quality stories for a broad audience.
leadership team
Helen Gerhardt: Helen's narrative essays have been featured in the The New York Times, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and National Public Radio. A long time community organizer, she is currently Chair of the Global Switchboard's Detention Support Working Group. Helen is a Witness co-founder and Partnerships Coordinator: partnerships@witness-stories.org
Felipe Gómez: Felipe is a Professor and Coordinator of the Carnegie Mellon University Hispanic Studies program with a research focus on 20th- and 21st-century Latin American countercultural artistic expression in literature, film, music, and comics/graphic novels. He is a Witness co-founder and the Experiential Arts Editor.
Mark Kramer: Mark is a Teaching Professor in creative writing at the University of Pittsburgh and author of the book Dispossessed. His work has appeared in Explore Parts Unknown, The Atlantic, Creative Nonfiction, Pittsburgh Quarterly, Vox Populi and Public Source. He is a Witness co-founder.
Shari Nacson: Shari has worked with asylum seekers since 2018. As a child therapist, forensic evaluator, freelance editor, activist, writer, and nonprofit consultant, Shari specializes in trauma-respectful, developmentally mindful, and anti-oppressionist collaborations. She is a Witness co-founder.
Fernán Osorno, PhD: Fernán co-founded and was the coordinating editor of an independent literature magazine in Mexico City, Revista La Peste, for ten years. He currently works and collaborates with forcibly displaced youth and immigrant communities. Fernán is a Witness co-founder and the Managing Editor.
Editorial Leadership
Fernán Osorno, Managing Editor — editor@witness-stories.org
Felipe Gómez, Experiential Arts Editor — eaeditor@witness-stories.org
Submission Guidelines
Have a story idea for Witness? Want to write for Witness? Contact Fernán Osorno, Managing Editor, editor@witness-stories.org.
