When a conspicuously white reporter walks into Eagles Barber Shop on lower Georgia Avenue, several guys there have a question.

“You going to write a story about gentrification?

Though some local residents feel insulted by the word gentrification, the barbers and customers at Eagles want me to hear the word.

On my 16th birthday, I remember listening to a radio report about a mass shooting that killed 33 people on a university campus.

Luckily, the woman wasn’t dead.

When we think of torture survivors, we usually don’t think of the people we pass on the street, going about their lives and living in our communities, but there are 50,000 in the DC region alone according to the Torture Abolition and Survivor Support Coalition.

One of those survivors is Selam Heran Tarik.

Alison Thomas is a professor in the AU Department of Literature, teaching college writing and creative writing, including a humor-centric writing colloquium for Spring 2013.