Gillian Ferris
News Director and Managing EditorGillian came to KNAU in 2001 as a freelance reporter. Her first story won an Arizona Associated Press Award. Since then, Gillian has won more than a dozen Edward R. Murrow Awards for feature reporting, writing, editing and documentary work. She served as KNAU’s local Morning Edition anchor for many years before becoming News Director and Managing editor in 2013. When she’s not working, Gillian likes to spend time in the natural world with her dog, Gertie. She is an avid hiker, skier, swimmer, and reader.
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In this week's segment of KNAU's series PoetrySnaps!, we meet Utah-based poet and professor Danielle Dubrasky. She wrote her first collection of poetry when she was in third grade. At the time, she couldn’t have known that someday her passion for the artform would help her grieve the loss of her father. -
This week’s PoetrySnaps! guest is Elena Byrne, a poet and multi-media artist. She grew up in Los Angeles in the 1960’s in a family of artists: her parents and brother were painters and did sketch work and conceptual art. Byrne was inspired by all of it, but she also wanted to find her own niche. In poetry, she was able to take the visual world she learned about as a child and put it into words on paper.
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In this week’s episode of KNAU's series PoetrySnaps!, we meet Kelli Russell Agodon. When it comes to writing poetry, she says she’s all about quantity.
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In this week's segment of KNAU's series PoetrySnaps!, Jesse Tsinajinnie Maloney shares his poem Ambulance with No Siren, set near the Tuba City medical center. He also talks about the key role his poetry mentor played in helping him develop his craft.
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Pamela Uschuk is a poet, political activist, and wilderness advocate. She is also a cancer survivor, and in this week's segment of KNAU's series PoetrySnaps!, she shares a poem that moves through the experience and endurance of chemotherapy. Uschuk says her poem Green Flame was inspired by one particular sight in nature.
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Writer Wendy Videlock describes poetic inspiration as being ambushed. An idea emerges and then tells her where to go. In her poem, Deconstruction, Videlock, uses an array of bird species to symbolize the infinite experience of being human.
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There are two things in particular poet Steven Nightingale loves about his craft: the sonnet, and Emily Dickinson. In this week’s PoetrySnaps! segment, he combines the two in a sonnet he wrote for his favorite American poet. Here is Steven Nightingale with, We Who Would Call Emily Dickinson Back.
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In this week’s segment, we meet Colorado-based poet José Alcantara. He prefers to write outside so that his muse, Mother Nature, can find him and offer him inspiration. Alcantara says he doesn’t write within a human timeframe. Instead, he writes according to nature’s eternal clock. Here is José Alcantara with his poem To a Friend Who Does Not Believe in God.
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In this week's segment of KNAU's series PoetrySnaps! we hear from David M. Parsons, a prolific writer and former Texas Poet Laureate. When he is struck by inspiration, he writes ideas down on small pieces of paper which he later develops into poems. That’s how Parsons’ poem, I Would Give You the Single Strawberry, came to life.
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This week's installment of KNAU's series PoetrySnaps! features Colorado-based poet Claudia Putnam reading her poem Baba Yaga. In it, Putnam twists the idea of the forest witch, concentrating not on scary mythology, but on independence and connection with nature.
