About

Francisco is a product of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. After graduating from J-School in 2022, where he concentrated on narrative writing, he was selected for two fellowships. As one of three Public Policy Institute of California CalTrout Ecosystem Fellows, he produced a river case study involving community engagement and restoration of Trabuco Creek. As the KYUK News Reporting Fellow he was a general assignment reporter and tasked with producing daily newscasts. It was at KYUK where Francisco cut his teeth in radio journalism and learned about reporting in rural Alaska. He then went on to work at the Chilkat Valley Newspaper as the Summer Reporter before his current role as a journalist for the Trinity Journal. Francisco got this role through the California Local Newsroom Fellowship program. His work focuses on investigative journalism, science writing and climate change.

Francisco’s literary writing has gotten him many opportunities to further his craft. He is an Into the Fire writing retreat scholarship recipient, and a Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Fellow. He is a product of the Writers Guild Foundation Veterans Writing Project, and the Veteran’s Summer Writing Intensive at Marlboro College sponsored by Words After War.

Francisco also participated in several cohorts of the Veterans Playwriting Workshop, created by the Theatre Communications Group as part of their Veterans & Theatre Institute, at the La Jolla Playhouse. During these workshops, he wrote a ten-minute play, as well as FOB Folsom and Salsa Night – both of which were full-length plays. Salsa Night received recognition and earned Francisco the 2023 Lieutenant William Broyles Award – named for the Vietnam veteran and screenwriter of Flags of Our Fathers, Jarhead, Apollo 13, Castaway and Khe Sanh. It is given to a playwright or screenwriter for a dramatic work dealing with U.S. Marine Corps heritage or Marine Corps life.

Francisco’s literary work has been featured in The Line Literary Review, Hippocampus Magazine, Iron & Air (Issue 41), Wrath-Bearing Tree, Consequence Forum, BULL, Hobart, Construction Literary Magazine, Split Lip, The War Horse, River Teeth: Beautiful Things, Collateral Journal, and the Dominican Writer’s Association. He is also a contributing co-editor in the second volume of the Incoming series Sex, Drugs, and Copenhagen.