Francesca Lyman

Francesca Lyman is a Seattle-based investigative journalist and author who writes for magazines and newspapers.

Francesca Lyman is a journalist and author of such books as The Greenhouse Trap: What We're Doing to the Atmosphere and How We Can Slow Global Warming, with World Resources Institute; and a children's...

But in recent weeks, shoppers from all around Seattle and the Puget Sound have returned here to say goodbye to the beloved landmark, which has hosted hundreds of festivals and events, including a seasonal local farmers market for the past 14 years. For nearly 40 years, Country Village has been an artisan center with specialty shops featuring everything from porcelain dolls to wood-crafted birdcages, custom knives and hand-lathed pens.
“These quaint streets and shops amid countryside — there’s...

IN the cool dawn light, I was hurriedly packing, tucking mosquito nets and flashlights into our duffel bags. My husband, our 6-year-old son and I had awoken to a rooster crowing outside our hotel on the outskirts of San Jose, Costa Rica's capital, ready to leave room service for the rain forest. Visions of butterflies and jaguars beckoned, as we were whisked through the still deserted streets for our charter plane to Corcovado National Park, one of the largest, least accessible, and most biol...

The Greenhouse Trap: What We're Doing to the Atmosphere and How We Can Slow Global Warming (A World Resources Institute Guide to the Environment)---If it's not already here, signs are that climate change may come soon. What will global warming mean for all of us who share the planet? How will it affect our health, our food supply, and the plant and animal species around us? How does our present way of life damage the atmosphere-and what can we do now to make a difference?

The New York Times Archives
GRASSLAND The History, Biology, Politics, and Promise of the American Prairie.By Richard Manning.Viking, $23.95.
What descendant of Homo erectus hasn't felt the thrill of looking out over a sea of grass swept by the wind? Despite the rich symbolic importance of grasslands in the American frontier myth, Americans' disrespect for the misunderstood "great empty middle of our continent" has largely degraded the grasslands, which cover about 40 percent of the country, R...

The Arlene award for articles 'making a difference,' one of ASJA's Annual Writing Awards

Horizon Air feature on the greening of Pacific Northwest cities

What's the charity value of your donation? If you wanted to know how much Value Village is giving to charity from your donations, look no further than a graphic circulated on social media by the Washington Attorney General’s office. It reveals that the fancy piece of furniture you gave to the store’s donation center could be worth as little as 2 cents to the charity.
That reality is far from the image the Bellevue-based chain has promoted, according to a lawsuit filed by Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson.

Nationwide Homes
A line of small, efficient “eco-cottages” were among the green modular homes on display at the International Builders’ Show last month.
Kevin Clayton, the chief executive of Clayton H...

What's the charity benefit of your donation? In a lawsuit filed in Washington State, Attorney General Bob Ferguson accuses the nation’s largest for-profit thrift-store chain of misrepresenting to the public the charitable benefits of customer donations and purchases. In response, Value Village claims that what it tells its donors and customers is covered under the free-speech protections of the First Amendment.

The journals of the scientists, artists, and filmmakers on expedition to a remote rain forest in Central Africa, home to Baka pygmies, gorillas, elephants and 200 foot trees.

Francesca Lyman’s investigation of a for-profit thrift store chain which does more than $1.2 billion in business a year, while masquerading as a charity, has won an Arlene Award for Writing that Makes a Difference. The award comes from the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA), which honors outstanding nonfiction work produced on a freelance basis each year.
The story was reported for InvestigateWest with support from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.
ASJA is the professiona...

KING5 "Live at Five" focuses on Value Village in an interview on this thrift-store chain. "Two years ago, the nonprofit media organization InvestigateWest published a series of articles about Value Village that brought to light some of the activities that [WA. State Attorney General] Bob Ferguson's suit seeks to end. The reporter who wrote those stories -- Francesca Lyman -- joined KING 5's Amanda Grace and David Espinosa-Hall to talk about what her reporting found."