Lee V. Gaines
Lee V. Gaines is an award-winning journalist whose work has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Reader, Chicago Magazine, Crain’s, the Pacific Standard and the Marshall Project. She also recently completed a fellowship with Chicago non-profit journalism lab, City Bureau.
Lee has more than six years of experience producing breaking news, magazine-length feature stories and investigative reports on subjects including education, the medical marijuana industry, criminal justice reform, social justice, local and regional politics, in addition to stories about Chicago’s thriving music and arts scene.
A Rhode Island native, Lee began her career as a staff reporter for GateHouse Media New England covering the Boston suburbs.
Lee reports on education from Illinois Public Media as part of the Illinois Newsroom regional journalism collaborative.
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When she found out that staff at the Danville Correctional Center had removed more than 200 books from a library inside the prison’s education wing,… -
Champaign County State’s Attorney Julia Rietz says she’s concerned about how legalization could impact the juveniles she works with on a daily basis.... -
Just because someone has four walls around them every night, that doesn’t mean they’re housed. That’s what Paul Hamann believes. He’s the president and… -
Johnny Page saw something as a child that no young person should ever see. “I witnessed my cousin being killed when I was maybe six, seven-years-old,”... -
Melissa Esparza fled her home in west suburban Chicago two years ago. Then 16, she said her parents became physically violent after years of verbal... -
Last summer, Chantil was forced to leave the townhome she shared with her two daughters and her mother in Des Plaines. (We’re withholding Chantil’s last... -
Illinois could save millions of dollars on incarceration costs if the federal ban on Pell Grants for inmates was lifted, according to a new report from... -
A lawsuit filed Monday in federal court includes numerous allegations of racial harassment of black employees at the University of Illinois at… -
A new report published by a national non-profit finds that Illinois prisons are holding about 17,000 more people than they were designed to house. The… -
Knowing there were other transgender inmates in prisons in Illinois and across the country made Leila Lee feel as though she wasn’t alone. She said it...
