Lilly Ana Fowler

About Me

I am currently a producer and project manager at KEXP, a freelance writer & a journalism teacher at the University of Washington.

Previously, I was a reporter for NPR member station KNKX, in Seattle & Tacoma. There I was part of team that won a national Edward R. Murrow award for overall excellence. I also won a National Association of Hispanic Journalists award for a radio feature about a Mexican, female conductor. 

Before moving to Seattle, I was a producer with the national PBS show "Religion & Ethics Newsweekly" and a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. My work has also appeared on NPR, The Seattle Times, The Atlantic, Salon.com, Slate Magazine, Mother Jones, The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times.

I have won numerous other journalism awards. At the St. Louis-Post Dispatch, I was part of the team to win a Scripps Howard Award and a Presidential Award of Achievement from the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. I also won a Wilbur Award and a Religion News Association award for excellence in religion reporting.

In 2024, I began teaching journalism at the University of Washington.

I graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a concentration in religious studies and history, then gained a master’s degree in religious studies from the University of Notre Dame and a master’s degree in journalism from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California.

I was born in Mexico, grew up in the border town of Nogales, and am fluent in Spanish.

Read More

My Latest Work

South Seattle Emerald •

COLUMN | Masked Men Are Detaining People. When Will Washington's Leaders Protect Us?

Sitting in a café in the small beach town of Bahía de Kino, Sonora, Mexico, near where I was born, I keep seeing headlines about U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in plainclothes and various types of masks arresting people. A media report from earlier this month involves disguised agents sowing confusion in White Center after they detained the "food lady," leaving the neighborhood reeling, unsure of whether the street vendor had been taken by ICE or by unidentified bounty hun...
South Seattle Emerald •

COLUMN | Why I Skipped Seattle's 'No Kings' Rally

An estimated 70,000 people in Seattle attended the nationwide "No Kings" protests against the Trump administration on Saturday. At the same time, a few miles south of Seattle, federal officials demanded that dozens of immigrants line up at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services field office in Tukwila. Why?It all started last week, when via an app called ICE SmartLINK, which immigration officials use to track people, some Washington state residents received an unusual message requiring th...
KNKX Public Radio •

Seattle City Council takes up changes to new minimum wage law

Seattle City Council takes up changes to new minimum wage law

A recent law in Seattle sets minimum pay for delivery apps drivers. The City Council is looking to amend the measure after service charges increased and business for some drivers plummeted.

In January, Seattle became one of two cities in the country to mandate a minimum wage for delivery workers for gig companies such as DoorDash and Instacart. But the companies are pushing back, hiking up fees for customers to offset the costs. Tha
KNKX Public Radio •

Food delivery apps are fighting Seattle's new minimum wage law. City Council is listening

At about 5 p.m. on a weekday, just as a lot of people are getting out of work, I climb into the car of 49-year-old Carmen Figueroa. She rents the car from a friend for $100 dollars a week.

Figueroa logs into the DoorDash app and shows me a map where parts are highlighted in red. The darker the red, the more orders there are.

“This is the hot zone map,” Figueroa told me. “Chances are we'll have a better chance of getting an order if you're in a hotzone.”

Figueroa started doing gig work about s
KNKX Public Radio •

Activists monitor Tacoma ICE facility 24/7 after detainee death

A man was found dead on March 7 while detained at the immigration detention center in Tacoma. On Friday, the University of Washington researchers released an analysis saying the man, 61-year-old Charles Leo Daniel from Trinidad and Tobago, was possibly held in solitary confinement for close to four years.

That would be one of the longest stays in isolation at any immigration facility in the U.S. The United Nations regards solitary confinement of more than 15 consecutive days as a form of tortur
KNKX Public Radio •

Venezuelan asylum seekers begin adjusting to new life in the Pacific Northwest

On a recent weekday morning dozens of asylum seekers from Venezuela gathered in the parking lot of a Quality Inn hotel in Kent, Washington. It’s busy. Everyone, however, seemed to be in a good mood.

They were headed to their latest home, a hotel by Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

Gabriel Hernandez, 23, and his three brothers and dad stacked cushions and other donated items on a cart they wheeled into their new hotel room. Hernandez said they figured the long arduous journey to America wa
KNKX Public Radio •

Wait, drive and worry: What it’s like being a Seattle rideshare driver

Walking around a parking lot outside Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Mohammed Tegene is logged on to the Lyft app, waiting for his turn to pick up a passenger.

"When I came in, I was 170-something. Now there’s from 160 to 120 cars ahead of me," Tegene said.

Inside the airport, Tegene said travelers might wait for 10 to 15 minutes for a ride from Lyft and Uber. Meanwhile, drivers could spend a good part of the day in a parking lot across the street from the rental cars, just for the chanc
KNKX Public Radio •

After detention, this organization welcomes and guides immigrants

It’s a drizzly, cold day. Mya Schultz and other volunteers with Advocates for Immigrants in Detention Northwest are doing their best to stay warm inside the tents propped up outside the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma.

In addition to a small portable heater, there’s snacks and signs in a dozen languages hanging on the walls to make it clear Seattle-Tacoma International is the nearest airport.

"One time, someone came out of the detention center with a plane ticket from like Washington
KNKX Public Radio •

Seattle makes history: First U.S. city to ban caste discrimination

Seattle makes history: First U.S. city to ban caste discrimination

Seattle has become the first city in the country to ban discrimination based on caste — the social hierarchy many South Asians are born into.

Here in the United States, Seattle has become the first city in this country to ban discrimination based on caste. That new law in the Pacific Northwest applies to the social hierarchy into which many South Asians are born - or are told that they are born. Some people opposed the legislat
NPR •

Striking teachers in Seattle have reached a tentative deal with the school district

Striking teachers in Seattle have reached a tentative deal with the school district

Teachers in Seattle say they've reached a tentative agreement with the school district on a new contract. The deal means striking teachers and some 50,000 students could return to the classroom soon.

After almost a week on the picket lines, Seattle teachers have reached a tentative deal with the school district. The Seattle Education Association, the teachers union, voted this afternoon to end the strike. Lilia
KNKX Public Radio •

Meet the Mexican, female conductor bringing classical music to Latinos in the Pacific Northwest

Classical music. It’s not usually associated with Latinos. The Seattle nonprofit Orquesta Northwest — made up of both the Ballard Civic Orchestra and the World Youth Orchestra — is changing that.

I met up with Madrigal at a community center in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood. The room is filled with musicians of all ages, high school students, retired folks. Some are Latino, others aren’t.

"I feel like more so than any other conductor I've worked with, she gets you to feel the music," said Rose
KNKX Public Radio •

Volunteers watch as immigrants are deported out of King County

A little after 8 a.m., activist Stan Shikuma is getting on his bike to ride from South Seattle to King County International Airport, known as Boeing Field. He uses a flight tracker to find out when a deportation flight is landing. The airline is usually iAero Airways. It contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.

Shikuma, a retired nurse, is wearing a black t-shirt that on the back reads “NO MORE U.S. CONCENTRATION CAMPS."

He says the detention of immigrants by ICE remind
KNKX Public Radio •

New King County prosecuting attorney Leesa Manion on drug possession, bail and gun violence

King County’s new prosecutor took office this month. Leesa Manion has worked in the prosecutor’s office for years, but she says she brings a new perspective to the job. She’s the first woman and person of color in the position. And she’s the first Korean American woman in the country to be elected as a top county prosecutor.

KNKX social justice reporter Lilly Ana Fowler talked with Manion about how crime is being handled in King County. Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below
NPR •

The Nooksack tribe in Washington is attempting to evict people from tribal homes

The Nooksack tribe in Washington is attempting to evict people from tribal homes

The Nooksack tribe in Washington state is attempting to evict dozens of people from tribal homes on which they've been making mortgage payments for years.

The Nooksack tribe in Washington state is removing dozens of people from the tribe because it disputes their ancestral ties. The move could also force them out of tribal housing. Lilly Ana Fowler from member station KNKX has more.

LILLY ANA FOWLER, BYLINE: The
The Seattle Times •

In Mexico City, chasing the feeling of home is complicated | Op-Ed

Of all the stories my cousin Gustavo told me while on a recent trip to Mexico City, it’s the one about his father speeding through the Sonoran desert with a corpse in his car that I keep picturing. Gustavo’s father, my tío, had been on a mission: to bury his mother in Nogales, the southwestern border town where I grew up.

Gustavo, or Gusi as those closest refer to him, has been a priest for more than 40 years and is a member of Opus Dei, the Catholic institution made famous by the best-selling

Follow Me