Carstensen was a three-time Pulitzer Center grantee for her reporting on the Syrian refugee crisis in Greece, where she covered the October 28 shipwreck, the clearing of Idomeni refugee camp by Greek authorities, and a Yazidi refugee camp near Mount Olympus. Her story on Syrian refugees fleeing bad conditions in Greece to return home was a finalist for the Immigration Journalism Award. She also reported from Turkey, Germany, France, Hungry, and Serbia. Her migration coverage aired nationally on The World and appeared in The Nation, Foreign Policy, and The Intercept. She has also written for The New York Times, Salon, Nautilus, and others. 

Previously, Carstensen was managing editor of The Bay Citizen, a San Francisco online news site that collaborated with The New York Times. She was managing editor of Salon and features editor of SFGate, where she oversaw the cultural coverage and was awarded a National Arts Journalism Program Fellowship at Columbia University. Carstensen lived in Costa Rica for six years, where she worked on a women’s human rights radio program broadcast on shortwave and worked as a translator and interpreter. She cut her teeth in journalism at the Whole Earth Review where she co-edited issues on ethics and technology and new media and was managing editor of “The Essential Whole Earth Catalog.” 

Carstensen lives in San Francisco, where she serves on the board of Mission Local and is working on her next book.