About
Gail Cornwall's award-winning writing covers education, psychology, child development, and a smattering of other issues impacting current and former children.
Her qualifications are cobbled together from a series of roles, including stay-at-home mother, higher education lawyer (Edwards, Angell, Palmer & Dodge, LLP), ninth-grade English teacher (Crossland High School), federal law clerk (U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit), special education intern (Stanford’s Youth & Education Law Project), research assistant (for Tabitha Konogo, David Garland, and Noah Feldman), teacher’s assistant (for Noah Feldman and Burt Neuborne), elementary and secondary education intern (U.S. Department of Education), and history major (University of California, Berkeley).
Born in St. Louis and raised in the Bay Area, she’s a serial monogamist of urban living who resided in New York City, Washington D.C., Boston, and Seattle before committing to San Francisco, which helps explain why three states admitted her to practice law.
Gail’s work has been published online by the Atlantic, Guardian, Washington Post, New York Times, USA Today, TIME, and Slate, among others – as well as in print by national glossies (including New York, the Nation, Good Housekeeping, and Real Simple) and newspapers (the LA Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe, and more).
She recently won a 2024–25 Solutions Journalism Network Award and got second place from the Religion News Association. Gail was also a member of the Hechinger Report's winning team for the Education Writer's Association's 2024 award for investigative & public service reporting , won a 2024 award for inclusion and representation from the Society for Features Journalism, was named a finalist for EWA's 2023 Eddie Prize, and won that organization's award for feature writing in 2022. Gail also received the honor of a 2022 John Swett Award for Media Excellence, given by the California Teachers Association, as well as second place for feature story, serious subject, from The San Francisco Press Club in 2024.
