Macavinta, Courtney

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Macavinta, Courtney

Personal

Female; married. Education: San Francisco State University, B.A. (journalism; cum laude), 1996.

Addresses

Home and office—San Jose, CA. E-mail—courtney@respectgirls.com.

Career

Journalist and adult for young adults. Sacramento Bee, Sacramento, CA, online editor, 1996; CNET News.com, San Francisco, CA, senior writer, 1996-2000; Chick-Click, editorial director, 2000-01; freelance journalist; RespectRx.com, Web publisher and writer.

Awards, Honors

First Place Award for Best News Story, Computer Press Awards, 1997; Internet Investigation of the Year award, Internet Freedom Awards, 1999; James Madison Freedom-of-Information Award, Society of Professional Journalists, 2000.

Writings

(With Andrea Vander Pluym) Respect: A Girl's Guide to Getting Respect and Dealing When Your Line Is Crossed, Free Spirit Publishing (Minneapolis, MN), 2005.

Contributor to periodicals and Web sites, including Washington Post, American Leadership Forum, Red Herring, and Wired News.

Sidelights

Raised in San Jose, California, Courtney Macavinta grew up in a working-class family that had its fair share of troubles, including poverty, substance abuse, and issues of racism. Beyond her family's struggles, Macavinta also battled the typical issues of many American girls: feelings of self-doubt, concerns with her physical image, and confusion about her multiracial heritage. Learning to overcome her personal insecurities, Macavinta pursued a career as an investigative reporter and has earned several awards within the journalistic field. Her desire to help young girls struggling with the same issues of self-identity and low self-esteem that she had

once battled inspired Macavinta to write Respect: A Girl's Guide to Getting Respect and Dealing When Your Line Is Crossed. As the journalist maintains on her home page, "respect is always within reach because true respect starts on the inside."

Written in collaboration with Andrea Vander Pluym, Respect channels Macavinta's message of self-love and provides young women with the tools needed to gain the self-confidence that will inspire others to treat one with respect. In addition to suggesting ways to appropriately respond to the words and actions of others, the book deals with such things as sexual harassment, date rape, peer pressure, drug and alcohol use, and peer relationships. As a reviewer for NEA Today noted, Macavinta and Pluym "keep the advice real" in their straightforward prose. Sara Catherine Howard, writing an assessment of Respect for Research Library, noted that the coauthors offer "definitive measures … without being didactic," while in Kliatt Sherri Ginsberg pointed out that Respect "gives the reader verbal weapons to manage these stressful years."