Brooke Edwards Staggs covers cannabis for The Cannifornian, the Orange County Register and other Digital First Media publications.
The Big Bear native earned her bachelors degree in English from California Baptist University, then got her masters in education as she taught high school English in Riverside County. After four years in the classroom, she left to be a student again herself, earning a masters in journalism from New York University while interning and freelancing for a variety of publications.
Before coming to the Register to cover south Orange County in January 2013, Staggs spent five years as a community reporter then city editor at the Daily Press in Victorville. She won several awards for her work there, including best breaking news story from the California Newspaper Publishers Association.
Staggs took top honors in the Best of the West contest's explanatory writing category for her 2016 reporting on California's cannabis legalization efforts. The judge noted: “Reporter Brooke Edwards Staggs is clearly among the nation’s preeminent reporters on this subject."
Staggs has ghostwritten several nonfiction books and occasionally teaches community college courses. She lives in Corona with her husband, who shares her love for travel and new adventures.
