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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Wyoming is lucky to still have a newspaper in every county. But last year, the Casper Star Tribune stopped producing a daily newspaper, going to three a week. Now there are no more daily papers in the state, and that qualifies Wyoming as a news desert.
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New research from the University of Wyoming shows that trees may be more resilient to climate change than previously thought.
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Open Spaces Show Rundown for July 12, 2024
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Back in 2010, Wyoming had 855 licensed daycare centers. But in the last 14 years, 285 of those have shut down. Meanwhile, the need for childcare is on the uptick. Last March, the town of Dubois, population 931, lost its only daycare. Now, some local parents are racing to find a solution.
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Sublette County is test driving a unique way to fund and expand access to childcare as many families in Wyoming grapple with a worsening shortage of daycare centers.
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Over the last 13 years, the number of licensed childcare providers in Wyoming has declined from around 900 daycares to just 570. Now, lawmakers are looking at solutions.
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The University of Wyoming (UW) says a public K-8 school in Laramie needs to find a new location after next school year. The Lab School has been housed on UW’s campus, in some form, for 137 years.
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The only statewide daily paper, the Casper Star Tribune, now produces just three days a week. Many other papers are even less frequent.
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A new study shows that out of 10 farm states in the U.S., Wyoming relies most heavily on federal tax credits to pay for its very expensive healthcare.