Roberta Staley, MA, is an award-winning magazine editor and writer, documentary filmmaker and author, specializing in international, gender, science and human rights reporting. She is former editor of the Canadian Chemical News and Enterprise magazines. She speaks publicly on gender, Afghanistan and female genital mutilation.  Roberta is also a college instructor, teaching magazine writing and social media, while offering private tutoring in English for high school and university students.

In 2019, Roberta’s biography, Voice of Rebellion – How Mozhdah Jamalzadah Brought Hope to Afghanistan, was released, winning the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Book Award for Social Justice Writing. Her first award-winning documentary, Mightier Than the Sword, filmed in Afghanistan, portrayed Afghan female journalists’ impact on gender norms. In 2021, Roberta produced and directed another documentary, Angels on Call, a portrayal of two street nurses who have foregone retirement to help the ill, addicted and poverty-stricken residents of Vancouver’s notorious Downtown Eastside.

Roberta is currently working on another book, Bone Through Skin, a Second World War novel about the experiences of her great aunt and uncle, Sally and Gordon Castle of Vancouver, who survived internment in Hong Kong’s notorious Stanley prisoner of war camp.