2021-22 RESP Fellows
The Religion & Environment Story Project (RESP) is pleased to announce its inaugural cohort of 2021-2022 fellows:
Britny Cordera is a published poet, nonfiction writer, and emerging journalist who investigates the intersections between environment, climate change, religion, and ecowomanism. She is interested in how climate change continues to exacerbate the settler-colonial agenda and how it is affecting Black and Indigenous communities. Cordera was a finalist for the 2020 Narrative 30 Below contest. Her poetry can be found or is forthcoming in Rhino, Narrative, Xavier Review, and PANK. She received her MFA from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. When she is not reporting for FBO, or writing poetry, Cordera teaches for St Louis Poetry Center and roller skates in her free time. Twitter: @bcdpoet / Website: britnycordera.com
Christina Nichol is a teacher and award-winning writer who has taught in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, South Korea, Kosovo, Russia, India, and the republic of Georgia, where her first novel, Waiting for the Electricity, is set. She currently teaches environmental and cultural studies at Sonoma State University. She received her MFA from the University of Florida and has published essays and stories in Lucky Peach, Guernica, The Paris Review, The Rumpus, Harper’s, Subtropics, Lonely Planet, Quarter After Eight, n+1, The Wall Street Journal, and The Guardian. Christina is particularly interested in sustainable communities and exploring new narratives that take the planet into consideration. Website: www.Christinanichol.com
Diana Kruzman is a freelance reporter whose work focuses on the intersection of the environment, religion and urbanism. She is particularly interested in how climate change impacts communities around the world that have traditionally been overlooked by English-language media. She has written for Undark, Earther, The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, Vice and the GroundTruth Project and has reported from Albania, India, Kyrgyzstan and the US. She received her Master’s degree in journalism and Near East studies from New York University in 2021. Twitter: @DKruzman / Website: dianakruzman.com
Fred Bahnson is the author of Soil & Sacrament (Simon & Schuster). His essays, travel writing, and narrative journalism have appeared in Harper’s, Emergence, Oxford American, Orion, Image, The Sun, Notre Dame Magazine, Best American Spiritual Writing, and Best American Travel Writing. Bahnson is the recipient of a Pilgrimage Essay Award, a W.K. Kellogg Food & Society Policy fellowship, and an artist fellowship in creative nonfiction from the North Carolina Arts Council. In 2019 he was a speaker at the Halki Summit, an international gathering of religious leaders convened by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew in Istanbul. He lives in Montana. Twitter: @fredbahnson / Website: https://speakersforall.com/speaker/fred-bahnson/
Heidi Shin is a public radio + podcast producer interested in the stories of immigrant communities and the inevitable connections between stories abroad and our lives in the US. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Geographic, California Sunday Magazine, Snap Judgment, 70 Million, the BBC, and PRI’s The World, amongst other outlets. She also co-created and produced WGBH/The Ground Truth Project’s “The New American Songbook,” a podcast about immigrant musicians, whose awards include an ONA, a Webby, and an Edward R. Murrow Award. Heidi also teaches at the PRX Podcast Garage, Harvard University’s Sound Lab, and leads Boston’s Sonic Soiree. Twitter: @byheidishin / Instagram: @shinherrie3 / Website: www.heidishin.com
Kendra Pierre-Louis is a senior climate reporter with the Gimlet/Spotify podcast How to Save a Planet. Previously, she was a climate reporter with The New York Times and a staff writer for Popular Science (PopSci) where she wrote about science, the environment, and, occasionally, mayonnaise. She is also the author of the book, “Green Washed: Why We Can’t Buy Our Way to a Green Planet.” Kendra has Masters’ in Science Writing from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and in Sustainable Development from the SIT Graduate Institute. She also has a B.A. in Economics from Cornell University. Twitter: @KendraWrites / Website: kendrawrites.com
Liuan Huska is a freelance journalist and writer at the intersection of religion, environment, health, and culture. She has bylines in Sojourners, Christianity Today, Psychology Today, Hyphen, The Christian Century, and other publications. She is also the author of Hurting Yet Whole: Reconciling Body and Spirit in Chronic Pain and Illness, a book weaving theology, sociocultural analysis, and memoir. She lives in the Chicago area, on ancestral Potawatomi land, with her husband and three children. Twitter: @LiuanHuska
Molly Olmstead is a reporter at Slate who primarily covers religion and politics. Originally from coastal Alabama, she attended UA and Mizzou’s Journalism School, where she studied science journalism. She has worked at Slate since 2016, covering news and politics, often with a focus on the South. She currently lives in Washington, D.C. Twitter: @MollyOlmstead
Sarah Ventre is an audio journalist based in Phoenix and host of Unfinished: Short Creek, a podcast about a fundamentalist Mormon community. As part of her reporting, Sarah embedded in Short Creek and lived in former FLDS prophet Rulon Jeffs’ house. The show was named #3 best podcast of 2020 by The New Yorker. Sarah is a journalism fellow with the Recovering Truth project from the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict and a Regional Producer for The Moth, and was previously at NPR. Her work has received an Edward R. Murrow Award, Wilbur Award, Ambie nomination, and was a finalist for two Religion News Association Awards. Twitter: @sarazonah / Instagram: @sarazonah / Website: sarahventre.com
Sigal Samuel is a Senior Reporter at Vox and co-host of the Future Perfect podcast. She writes about artificial intelligence, neuroscience, climate change, and the intersection of technology with ethics and religion. Previously, she was Religion Editor at The Atlantic, Opinion Editor at the Forward, and Associate Editor at the Daily Beast. Sigal is also the author of two books: “Osnat and Her Dove,” a children’s book about the world’s first female rabbi, and “The Mystics of Mile End,” a novel about a dysfunctional family dealing with mysticism, madness, and mathematics in Montreal. Twitter: @SigalSamuel / Website: sigal-samuel.squarespace.com