Jonathan Kirkpatrick & Kastalia Medrano

Jonathan is a Filter tobacco harm reduction fellow. He’s incarcerated at Washington Corrections Center, where he’s a Teacher’s Assistant for re-entry workshops and trains peer educators in HIV and hepatitis C harm reduction. His writing has been published by the Appeal, Truthout, Jewish Currents and the Seattle Journal of Social Justice. His Washington State Department of Corrections ID is #716850, and due to a 29-year-old paperwork error his name in Securus is “Jonathon.” You can read his other Filter writing here.

Jonathan’s fellowship is supported by an independently administered tobacco harm reduction scholarship from Knowledge-Action-Change, an organization that has separately provided restricted grants and donations to Filter.

Kastalia is Filter‘s deputy editor. She previously worked at half a dozen mainstream digital media outlets and would not recommend the drug coverage at any of them. She was also a syringe program peer worker in NYC, where she did outreach hep C testing and navigated participants through treatment. You can read her other Filter writing here.