By: Jonah Lazar, Staff Writer
Since 1965, when The Peak first started rolling out weekly issues for the good people on the mountain of Lhukw’lhukw’áyten and beyond, many incredible students have worked for this little publication. Through the valuable learning experience of working for a university newspaper, many of The Peak’s former writers, editors, and contributors have made a name for themselves in the field. From novels, hiking guides, war reporting, and hockey podcasts, these writers have found success down various paths. Yet, their first tastes of the writing and reporting world started here at The Peak, where they put together their first articles, sweat over their first deadlines, and pitched their first ideas. So if you ever find yourself wondering about writing an article or attending a pitch meeting, just remember:
you never know where The Peak might take you.
Michael Hingston
Michael Hingston’s time at The Peak as copy editor and writer in the mid-2000s was the inspiration behind his novel The Dilettantes, which recounts a fictionalized version of his time working for our publication. In this book, we follow Alex and Tracy, two editors who are battling a mass-produced newspaper stealing the attention of SFU’s students. When a disgraced Hollywood star enrolls at SFU, Alex, Tracy, and the team at The Peak see an opportunity to restore their status by covering his tumultuous behaviour at the university. The Dilettantes was a #1 regional bestseller after its release in 2013, and won awards from The Tyee and Winnipeg Free Press for its sarcastic, coming of age whimsy. Since then, Hingston has enjoyed quite a multidisciplinary career, writing another book in 2022 called Try Not to Be Strange. He has also worked as a journalist, contributing to papers such as The Washington Post, The Walrus, and The Guardian among others across his journalistic career dating back to 2013. Outside of writing, he also co-founded a publishing house called Hingston & Olsen, and now runs a bookstore in Edmonton called Porch Light Books.
Luke Faulks
Luke Faulks admitted to us that he “only planned to contribute the handful of articles to The Peak necessary to get into UBC’s journalism program,” but in doing so, he ended up falling in love with The Peak. Faulks started as a staff writer before serving as the opinions editor in 2022. During this time, he worked on a wide range of topics, like the ethics of SFU claiming credit for student movements, to humour articles, like the “danger” of umbrella awnings. This experience at The Peak has since supported him in becoming a reporter for Pemberton’s local news outlet Pique News Magazine. After going from The Peak to The Pique, Faulks has written extensively on environmental, community, and local politics. He has also written for other BC-based publications like The Tyee, where he wrote a brilliant piece about how Indigenous oral history and archeological technology are used in tandem to uncover lost villages. Speaking to The Peak, Faulks said, “The Peak taught me the value of positive writer-editor relationships, honest post-mortems on a paper, collaborative newsrooms, and going the extra mile to seek out voices that are too often overlooked by mainstream outlets. Those are the qualities I look for in a newsroom. I’ve since worked in broadcast and travel writing, but I always return to the hard-news outlets I first fell in love with at The Peak.”
Michelle Gomez
Michelle Gomez was at the helm of The Peak’s news section during the beginnings of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. During her time as News Editor, Gomez oversaw The Peak’s coverage of how this global pandemic impacted SFU and SFU students. “I had no idea I wanted to pursue journalism when I first contributed to The Peak,” Gomez told us, “I was in my third year of undergrad on an exchange semester in Barcelona during a politically tumultuous time in the city, and was encouraged by one of my professors to write about it for my local student newspaper. One article led to another, which led to a staff writer position, which eventually led to me leading the news team. It was initially just a fun part-time job, but somewhere along the way I realized it was my passion,” she added. “My time at The Peak taught me to stay curious, always be skeptical, and keep an open mind.” After moving on from The Peak, Gomez went on to report for local news outfit CityNews Vancouver. She is now a reporter for CBC News, continuing her coverage of the Metro-Vancouver area that she started in our news section. She has written recently about search and rescue operations, such as a hang-glider being saved by an onlooker after crashing into a cliff and hikers rescued from a fall on Brunswick Mountain.
Stephen Hui
Another former news editor, Stephen Hui worked for The Peak in the early 2000s, where he reported on the need for Indigenous student housing among many other things. Since then, he has written a few books about hiking in the Southwest of BC, including 105 Hikes In and Around Southwestern British Columbia. This book functions as one of the most comprehensive guides to some of the unceded Coast Salish territories’ most beautiful hiking terrains. It offers detailed maps, descriptions, and locations of trails, supported by Hui’s personal anecdotes as he has hiked every single trail featured in the book. It also offers some of the history behind these trails, and the second edition features a foreword by Indigenous Stó:lō historian Si:yémiya, Dr. Sonny McHalsie. Hui has also served as the web and technology editor at the Vancouver-based publication The Georgia Straight, and has been named a fellow at Canadian Geographic. Reflecting on his time at The Peak, Hui told us, “Before I showed up at The Peak offering to write (really bad) music reviews, I never considered a career in journalism. I got to cover myriad campus controversies, go inside a wildfire, and see a premier cry after being caught drunk driving. In retrospect, it’s hard to imagine my life story (so far) without The Peak. It’s where I became a writer and found my voice.”
Izzy Cheung
Izzy Cheung managed both the arts and culture section from April 2024, and the sports section from August of the same year until April 2025. During her time at The Peak, Cheung wrote many articles about hockey, including writing a letter to two former Canucks players covering Red Leafs hockey games, and summaries of the Canucks’ season. This fascination for hockey did not fade! After her graduation, she has moved on to reporting extensively on hockey and the Vancouver Canucks. Her journalistic work about the Canucks has led to her becoming the site editor of The Hockey News; she also co-hosts the podcast Hockey, Actually. Cheung also spent some time working as an editorial intern at Explore Magazine. You can follow her on Instagram to see her sports interviews and other journalistic endeavors: @izzycheung37
Michelle Lang
Michelle Lang began her career as a journalist writing for The Peak in the mid-90s. Following her graduation, Lang went on to write for the Calgary Herald. Lang drummed up a career in journalism in Prince George, Moosejaw, and Regina, before settling in at the Calgary Herald. It was here where she won the National Newspaper Award for the best specialized reporting as a beat reporter covering Alberta’s health industry and national health care issues. Lang’s prolific work was well recognized in the national journalism scene. This success quickly led to Lang being sent overseas to report in Afghanistan as a war correspondent in 2009. Tragically, only 20 days after she arrived, Lang would be the only Canadian journalist to lose her life during the Afghanistan war in Kandahar. Lang was profoundly impactful as a journalist: over a thousand tributes poured in on the Calgary Herald in an online condolences page to remember her. Lang was awarded the Canadian World Press Freedom Award shortly after her death. The Calgary Herald editor-in-chief at the time, Lorne Motley, wrote, “It creates this hole, not only for the Herald, obviously, but also for Canwest and any other news organization.” Today, a fellowship in her name continues to support up-and-coming journalists.
