Violet Blue
![](https://authors.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/civicrm/custom/author_photo_0e5432d3a8a6256e2580a62aa2077e96.jpeg)
Website | http://violetblue.com/ |
https://twitter.com/violetblue |
Violet Blue is a six-time Independent Publisher Book Award ("IPPY") winning author and investigative journalist on cybersecurity, Covid-19, privacy, and human rights, having bylined for outlets including O The Oprah Magazine, Engadget, Financial Times, CNN International, CBS News, San Francisco Chronicle, PESTE Magazine, Popular Science, and many others.
Ms. Blue's books have sold over 2.2 million copies and have been translated into French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Russian. Her most notable book appearance was on The Oprah Winfrey Show.
Her most notable charity contribution was donation of over 200,000 sales of The Smart Girl’s Guide to Privacy to Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders, the International Rescue Committee, and the American Civil Liberties Union, raising £3.7m for migrant charities.
Ms. Blue's new book A Fish Has No Word For Water won 2023 Independent Publisher Book Awards GOLD, a National Indie Book Awards 2023 Finalist, a 2023 Kindle Book Awards Winner, a Publishers Weekly BookLife Editor's Pick, and received 9.75 (out of 10) in the Publishers Weekly BookLife Prize contest. KIRKUS calls it “Gripping.” BookLife/Publisher's Weekly describes it as a “Superb memoir” with "Sharp dialogue, incisive observations, and polished prose."
Blue's book on personal digital privacy and security, The Smart Girl’s Guide to Privacy, was praised by ELLE Magazine as, “An illuminating handbook for women.” Ingram Collection Development Librarian Becky Walton wrote, “Highly recommended for public and school libraries, as well as social science and technology classes.” Book Riot wrote, “It’s up to each one of us to protect our own privacy, and The Smart Girl’s Guide to Privacy is a crucial weapon in that fight.”
Ms. Blue's many book titles have been featured in BBC, Blender, Bizarre Magazine, BookRiot, ChicagoNow, Cinematical, CNET, CNN, Columbia Journalism Review. Cosmopolitan, Cosmopolitan UK, Daily Dot, DAME Magazine, ELLE, Forbes, Foreword Reviews, Forum, Gizmodo, Glamour, Guardian UK, Harper's, Jane, Marie Claire, Maxim, Men's Fitness, Men's Health. MSNBC, Newsweek, New York Times, NPR, O: The Oprah Magazine, PBS Mediashift, Playboy, Redbook, Salon, San Francisco Bay Guardian, San Francisco Examiner, San Jose Mercury News, Savage Love, Self Magazine, SFist, SF Weekly, Utne Reader, Vice (Motherboard), Village Voice, Wall Street Journal, WebMD, and Wired. Her work has been cited in numerous books including David Levy's Love + Sex With Robots, The 4-Hour Body by Timothy Ferriss, and others.
Blue has also been a guest featuring her books on The Tyra Banks Show, CNN International, NPR, BBC, and HBO's Thought Crimes.
Guardian UK called Ms. Blue, "One of the leading figures in tech writing in the world."
She is a member of the Internet Press Guild, The Authors Guild, The New Zealand Society of Authors, the International Federation of Journalists, PEN, the World Health Network, and Advisor to online legal privacy resource Without My Consent. Her conference appearances include ETech, LeWeb, CCC, the Forbes Brand Leadership Conference, two Google Tech Talks, and several talks over many years at SXSW Interactive.
Ms. Blue has 15 years of experience in leading healthcare crisis communications workshops and trainings. This includes Media Training for UCSF Global Health Masters Program, Yearly UCSF Health immersive NGO trainings (Complex Humanitarian Emergency Training for Doctors Without Borders, American Red Cross applicants) and human rights conventions such as The Oslo Freedom Forum. Ms. Blue led trainings for San Francisco Sex Information’s crisis communications workshops for nurses, therapists, and sexuality and gender students, as well as trained new counselors to staff the organization’s emergency hotline.
Genre:
- Non-Fiction
Skills:
- Freelance Writing
Branch:
Hamilton
Location:
Publications:
![](https://authors.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/civicrm/custom/No_Word_2023_fd22845866f9eb9e9c460038dfeab3d9.jpg)
A Fish Has No Word For Water
BookLife/Publisher's Weekly: "All that Violet Blue wants for herself is a clean place to stay, a hot meal, a high school education…and to get away from her mentally ill, abusive mother and the drug cartels she double crossed. That’s only part of the story. In the superb A Fish Has No Word For Water, her highly readable memoir, Blue plunges readers into a life that is both a freewheeling adventure tale and a clear-eyed survey of stories of human wreckage, as she recounts the challenges of survival on the streets of 1980s San Francisco, during the AIDS crisis. Throughout the book she contextualizes her story with illuminating examinations of city history and cultural politics, demonstrating the profound effects of both on hers and other lives on the margins, especially the young people with whom she found community."
WINNER: 2023 Independent Publisher Book Awards GOLD
National Indie Excellence® Awards FINALIST
KIRKUS: "A gripping account of survival and a condemnation of the conditions that marginalize and endanger the unsheltered... The author’s unsparing style reflects Blues’ investigative journalist background, and the prepared reader should get a lot out of her story."
![](https://authors.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/civicrm/custom/Smart_Girl_s_Guide_To_Privacy_c103a188a0b8b29c9d616ca0222ca857.jpeg)
The Smart Girl's Guide To Privacy
The whirlwind of social media, online dating, and mobile apps can make life a dream—or a nightmare. For every trustworthy website, there are countless jerks, bullies, and scam artists who want to harvest your personal information for their own purposes. But you can fight back, right now.
In The Smart Girl’s Guide to Privacy, award-winning author and investigative journalist Violet Blue shows you how women are targeted online and how to keep yourself safe. Blue’s practical, user-friendly advice will teach you how to:
–Delete personal content from websites
–Use website and browser privacy controls effectively
–Recover from and prevent identity theft
–Figure out where the law protects you—and where it doesn’t
–Set up safe online profiles
–Remove yourself from people-finder websites
Even if your privacy has already been compromised, don’t panic. It’s not too late to take control.
Praise for The Smart Girl's Guide To Privacy:
- ELLE Magazine: “An illuminating handbook for women.”
- Ingram Collection Development Librarian Becky Walton: “This book [Smart Girl's Guide to Privacy] is highly recommended for public and school libraries, as well as social science and technology classes.”
- Book Riot: “It’s up to each one of us to protect our own privacy, and The Smart Girl’s Guide to Privacy is a crucial weapon in that fight.”
- More praise for the first edition of The Smart Girl’s Guide to Privacy at Foreword Reviews, The Advocate, SF Weekly, DAME Magazine, Voice of Youth Advocates (VOYA) Magazine, The Daily Dot, ChicagoNow, others.