DOCUMENTARY FILM PRODUCING
Since 2019 I’ve been part of a small team working on the forthcoming hybrid documentary King Coal, directed by Elaine McMillion Sheldon. It premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival and will be released later this year. As co-producer, I worked as a talent and location scout, helped to develop the concept of the film, planned and managed film shoots, wrote grants, recorded sound, fact-checked, and searched for and organized archival footage.
This six-part international documentary series about long-term companionship and love came out April 2021 on Netflix. I was the associate producer for the U.S. episode, directed by Elaine McMillion Sheldon. My Love was named Best Episodic Series at 2022 IDA Documentary Awards.
WRITING
For Southerly, I wrote about how climate change is leading to more intense flooding in a vulnerable region.
As an Appalachia Reporting Fellow with GroundTruth, I co-reported this series published by Mountain State Spotlight, a civic newsroom in West Virginia. My reporting partner and I were named finalists for the Livingston Award.
For The Washington Post, I explored the water systems in southern West Virginia, highlighting the efforts some residents must go through to get decent drinking water and the work of those trying to find a solution.
For The Washington Post, I wrote about how a West Virginia glass company reinvented itself by pairing the enterprising spirit of young creatives with the institutional knowledge of the lifers inside its historic factory.
For The Washington Post, I co-wrote this piece about a woman who pleaded guilty to killing seven veterans at a VA hospital in West Virginia.
For WVPB and NPR, I reported on how West Virginia was among only a handful of states that had a lifetime ban on food stamps for people who commit drug-related felonies. State lawmakers changed the law during the following Legislative session.
RADIO + AUDIO
I was lead producer on this podcast from Virginia Public Media about mutual aid during the earliest days of Covid-19. We explored complex topics, like how our country’s food system works and how the faithful observed religious traditions during lockdown. The New York Times named our show a “Podcast for the Pandemic Era.” (This photo is from a 2020 Easter service at a drive-in movie theatre in Johnstown, Pa.)
This podcast I reported and co-produced for the University of Virginia’s Religions Lab show Sacred & Profane explores why a controversial Hare Krishna community in rural West Virginia decided to sell its mineral rights to gas companies.
I was a 2019 Livingston Award finalist for this collaboration on water quality issues in central Appalachia with the Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette-Mail and the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader.
My story on how one of the country’s worst mine disasters ushered in critical safety laws was featured in NPR’s 1968: How We Got Here, a special series about key political and cultural events of that year.
This short-staffed rural health department in southern West Virginia treks from one end of the sprawling county to the other every week, offering clean needles in exchange for used ones, at a tent on the side of the road. Those they serve are dangerously at risk of contracting HIV.