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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On November 10, 2016, the Eastern Shoshone Tribe brought wild bison back to the Wind River Reservation. They set ten young wild bison loose on 300 acres. Dick Baldes spent his entire career as a biologist working to bring wildlife back to the reservation. And it was his son, Jason, who helped make the bison release a reality. Wyoming Public Radio’s Melodie Edwards attended the release ceremony.
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The name Ken Burns has become synonymous with American history documentaries. You probably know some of them like “The Civil War,” “Country Music,” and “The Roosevelts.” Now Burns has done something he’s never done before: released a new PBS series that traces the history of an animal. It’s called “The American Buffalo.” Wyoming Public Radio’s Melodie Edwards talked to Burns about why he chose this subject and why now.
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Five years ago, 20 years after his death, Matthew Shepard's autopsy was released. During the 20th anniversary show, Wyoming Public Radio’s Melodie Edwards spoke to the coroner who conducted Shepard’s autopsy.
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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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