 As a journalist, Shourd has published on a variety of platforms, such as the New York Times, Mother Jones, Reuters, Daily Beast, Salon, San Francisco Magazine, SF Chronicle, and many more.Shourd wrote, produced, and later directed a play on the subject of solitary confinement, The BOX, which premiered at Z Space in San Francisco in 2016, where it was directed by Cuban playwright Michael John Garcés.The play is based on the two-year investigation Shourd conducted while working with watchdog organization Solitary Watch and as a Visiting Scholar at UC Berkeley's Center for Law and Society, wherein she collected over 75 testimonies from prisoners kept in isolation in prisons across the U.S.