Journalism and lectures
Elizabeth started her professional writing career by earning bylines in Vice Magazine, [6] Nerve.com [7] and Bitch Media [8] in March 2013. In October 2013, she was brought on as a regular contributing writer and entertainment reporter for New York Amsterdam News [9] arts and entertainment section where she has conducted interviews with African American leaders of their fields like producer, Teddy Riley, [10] Walter Williams of The O'Jays [11] and Black Girls Code founder, Kimberly Bryant.
Elizabeth wrote for a number of Bay Area publications in 2014 such as San Francisco Bay Guardian, East Bay Express [12] SF Weekly where she interviewed Talib Kweli and Ishmael Butler of Shabazz Palaces She worked as the associate editor of The Deli Magazine San Francisco from 2013 to 2017. Jordannah wrote for the now defunct International music sector of MTV called MTV Iggy. [13]
On July 26, 2016, Elizabeth made her debut at LA Weekly [14] with an interview with poet, musician and author Saul Williams. Her rock writing included interviews with Hope Sandoval of Mazzy Star, Chris Stein of Blondie, Devendra Banhart, Miranda Lee Richards, The Warlocks, Imaad Wasif and Dead Meadow. Elizabeth also covered diversity and rape culture in the music industry. She wrote articles exploring Black women in rock and rock criticism with the articles "The Only Black Woman in the Room: Black Female Rock Journalists Share Their Experiences", which included Black women rock critics Kandia Crazy Horse, Trina Dharma Green and Nia Hampton, and "Black Female Guitarists Get Real About How the Music Industry Views Them."
Her LA Weekly catalog also includes a 2016 interview with Jackie Fox of The Runaways on rape culture in rock which followed a 2015 interview in Bitch Media where Fox shared the accounts of her rape by manager Kim Fowley in 1974. She also wrote an essay on the topic called "Dear Men of the Music Industry: You Can Do Better" which was published one month after the MeToo Movement broke.
From September 2017 to May 2018, Elizabeth covered MeToo and contributed regularly for Ms. Magazine. Elizabeth continued her work as an essayist during the MeToo era by writing the essay "For Black Women Survivors, #MeToo Is Still Falling Short" for PopSugar in October 2018.
In 2018 she worked for the Chicago Reader, [15] DownBeat, [16] Hearst Magazines, [17] NPR Music, [18] and Condé Nast. Elizabeth's writing consists of interviews, music journalism, personal essays, articles on healing in relationships and trauma [19] and literary journalism. [20] She has taught writing and journalism workshops at the Maryland Institute College of Art and Center for New Music in San Francisco. [3] [21] She has lectured at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, De Montfort University in Leicester, England, [22] and was invited as a guest journalist at Harvard University's Black Lives Matter: Music, Race, and Justice Conference [23] in February 2017. She has also moderated panels on literature and film at Baltimore Book Festival [24] and Creative Alliance [25] in Baltimore, MD.
Elizabeth became the editor in chief of TERSE. journal [26] in 2018 through 2020 after contributing to the online literary journal as a columnist since 2016. In 2020, her writing appeared in Chamber Music Magazine, New York City Jazz Record, The ZORA Music Canon, Universal Music Group's branded content online publication, uDiscover Music and has written a COVID-19 arts & entertainment column for New York Amsterdam News entitled Stealth Isolation. In August 2020, she was a participant in the inaugural Florence Price Festival as a panelist on the Race and Gender in Classical Music Criticism in panel.
In December 2020, Elizabeth was brought on as editor in chief of Mutual Mentorship for Musicians, which was founded by musicians Jen Shyu and Sara Serpa. She led the organization's first anthology on her literary journal, Publik / Private.
Elizabeth interviewed Stanley Nelson Jr. for New York Amsterdam News in March 2021. On March 21, 2021, Elizabeth penned a theoretical series entitled Feminist Jazz Journalism, Now! which was published by Jazz Journalist Association. The articles explore the intersection of jazz and feminist theory. Feminist Jazz Journalism, Now! Is followed by Part 2: A solution-based analysis where she offers solutions to combat the misogynistic dominance of white male jazz critics and further makes a point in Part 3: Speculative Futures & New Jazz Journalism that without the proper, fair and equal acknowledgement of women and diverse jazz musicians and writers, the future of jazz may not prevail. Elizabeth also founded the jazz criticism archive called Feminist Jazz Review where much of her women and LGBTQ centered jazz journalism is compiled and published with links to their respective original publications.
In April 2021, she was selected as a keynote speaker and panelist at the Columbia University's Music Scholarship Conference [27] along with classical music critic, Anne Midgette and Emmy award winning video journalist, Estelle Caswell.
