Shamontiel L. Vaughn joined the Chicago Tribune's team on October 11, 2010. She writes reviews for the Books section and occasionally blogs for CT's Taking Off travel blog, and is the Digital News Editor for Media on Demand's (MoD) National Health and Travel sections. She was also the producer for the Chicago Tribune's health chats.

Shamontiel (Shuh mawn T L) became the Message from Montie blogger on ChicagoNow.com in October 2009. She's had work published in Yahoo! News, Yahoo! TV, TheFrisky, AT&T;, HyPaChicago, Yahoo! Contributor Network and Examiner; and print publications like Underlined Magazine, Fate magazine, The DePaulia, Spoken Vizions magazine, the Chicago Defender and Chicago Tribune. She's also the author of two novels, "Change for a Twenty" and "Round Trip."

Music (neo-soul, oldies and some new school R&B;, positive hip-hop, jazz); Books (topic interest varies but favorite authors are Karen Siplin and Langston Hughes); Entertainment enthusiast and a diehard fan of "Twilight" books and movies and "Vampire Diaries" television show. She's also a vegetarian who is fascinated by health and sex education (was a public speaker on college campus to talk about STD prevention); web editing; journal writing; and hanging out at the lakefront.