Author

Anna J. James

Anna is an award-winning journalist originally from Sydney, Australia. She began her professional career in publishing at Wiley and then reported for Major League Baseball’s international office. Anna has written for Entrepreneur, Fox Sports, NSW Parliament, Narratively, ABC, Fortune, and other outlets in addition to regular guest spots on radio and podcasts. In 2017, she was awarded the Australian Press Council’s Journalism Student of the Year. The same year, she co-hosted a radio program in Byron Bay that won a Walkley Award for Innovation in Journalism grant. She is currently completing her thesis, Why We Need Baseball, within the MFA Creative Writing Program at the University of Victoria. She is happy to call Victoria home.

Homelessness

PHOTOS: Inside the tenting community at Beacon Hill Park

By Anna J. James
Sep 8, 2020

We recently spent time in the park and spoke to campers.

Addiction

Meet the Rig Diggers: Current and former addicts who collect used needles in Victoria

By Anna J. James
Sep 2, 2020

They usually find eight per shift. Last week they broke a record.

Science

How a Victoria nonprofit obtained Canada's first medical exemption for magic mushrooms

By Anna J. James
Aug 27, 2020

Psilocybin, the active ingredient in "magic" mushrooms, has been banned in Canada since 1974

Marine Traffic

Should our waters have all these American yachts in them?

By Anna J. James
Aug 18, 2020

At any one time, there’s usually a boat or two in the Inside Passage flying the stars and stripes

Policing

What are street checks, the thing Victoria just voted to ban?

By Anna J. James
Aug 14, 2020

They're much different than the more controversial practices of "carding" or "stop and frisk"

Homelessness

Where are Victoria's homeless coming from?

By Anna J. James
Aug 11, 2020

“Most of the people we see are from somewhere else,” an outreach worker told The Capital

Crime

Inside Victoria's bike theft underground

By Anna J. James
Aug 4, 2020

One trick involves thieves hacking into condo security systems to gain access to bike storage lockers

Homelessness

Inside the City of Victoria’s case against the Beacon Hill tenters

By Anna J. James
Jul 30, 2020

It took a city audit, drone surveys and hundreds of pages of legal documents to move 60 campers from one part of Beacon Hill Park to another part