Melodie Edwards
ReporterMelodie Edwards is the host and producer of WPM's award-winning podcast The Modern West. Her Ghost Town(ing) series looks at rural despair and resilience through the lens of her hometown of Walden, Colorado. She has been a radio reporter at WPM since 2013, covering topics from wildlife to Native American issues to agriculture.
Her civil discourse project called, "I Respectfully Disagree," brought together people in the state modeling how people find compromise to make change. One of these conversations, "Time Heals All Wounds," won a national PMJA award. She is also the recipient of a national PRNDI award for her investigation of the reservation housing crisis and several regional Edward R. Murrow Awards, two for "best use of sound."
Melodie grew up in Walden, Colorado where her father worked in the oilfield and timber industries and her mother was the editor of the Jackson County Star. Later her parents ran an Orvis fly fishing store there. She graduated with an MFA from the University of Michigan on a Colby Fellowship and received two Hopwood Awards for fiction and nonfiction. She was the first person to receive the Pattie Layser Greater Yellowstone Writing Fellowship through the Wyoming Arts Council and was the recipient of the Doubleday Wyoming Arts Council Award for Women. She's the author of two books, Akoreka and the League of Crows, a young adult novel, and Hikes Around Fort Collins. Melodie and her husband own Night Heron Books and Coffeehouse. She also loves to putz in the garden and backpack and ski in the mountains with her twin daughters, her husband and her dog.
Email: medward9@uwyo.edu
Phone: 307-766-2405
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You may have witnessed a popular way that the American public is attempting to reckon with its history of genocide of Indigenous people: before a public event, someone recites a list of the original peoples from the area. But what do Indigenous leaders and history keepers really think of these land acknowledgments? We decided to ask. Wyoming Public Radio’s podcast The Modern West is currently releasing the series Mending the Hoop, which takes a look at the history of the Plains Indian Wars from the perspective of tribes. Host and producer Melodie Edwards assembled this collection of Indigenous voices. -
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On November 29, 1864, Colorado’s third cavalry descended on a village of Cheyenne and Arapaho, mostly women, children and elders. The massacre that ensued is often considered one of the worst in U.S. history. Colorado Gov. Hickenlooper has apologized for the massacre, but the Northern Arapaho tribe is now negotiating with the City of Boulder for other reparations: some land where the troops trained. Wyoming Public Radio’s Melodie Edwards spoke with Alan O’Hashi, a documentary filmmaker who just released a film about the negotiations.
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For the last few years, Wyoming Public Radio has been producing a podcast that tells long form narrative stories for and about Westerners. It’s called The Modern West and we’ll be rolling out the sixth season of the podcast in the coming weeks. Wyoming Public Radio’s Kamila Kudelska sat down with the host and producer of the show, Melodie Edwards, to hear what she’s up to this time around.
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Today, we’re looking back at our stories from 2022. The newsroom picked a couple of our favorites. We’ll hear about how two hospitals in the state cut pregnancy services this year. A team at the University of Wyoming is trying to help return cultural artifacts in museums to their rightful owners. And we look into how rising temperatures can affect the livestock industry. Those stories and more.
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On election night, Wyoming Public Radio’s Melodie Edwards had the chance to speak with Harriet Hageman only moments after she learned she’d won Wyoming’s lone seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Edwards asked her about bringing the state together after a contentious run against Liz Cheney and Democrat Lynette Grey Bull, and about her first priorities. Here’s what Hageman had to say.
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Wyoming native and attorney Republican Harriet Hageman has beaten out her Democratic rival to claim the title of Wyoming’s U.S. House Representative.
