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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Margarita Cruz was always a fiction writer, but she says it was a life-threatening medical crisis that turned her into a poet. Poetry was therapeutic in her recovery and gave her a place to put her grief, a central theme in much of Cruz’s writing. She weaves the idea of loss through the poem she shares with us today, "Like Stars, Like Feathers." -
In the latest installment of KNAU's series PoetrySnaps!, Pam Davenport shares with us her poem As She Shows Me My Heart. She wrote it after undergoing an echocardiogram, and it’s a reminder to all of us to count our blessings; big or small, obvious or subtle, mundane or dramatic.
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In the latest installment of KNAU's series PoetrySnaps!, we meet Lauren Camp, the current Poet Laureate of New Mexico. She didn’t know she was a poet until someone attending one of her visual art shows many years ago told her she was based on the blurbs she wrote for her pieces. It was a revelation that changed her life.
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Remember when you were on the verge of adulthood and all you wanted was to get a job and an apartment and start your life? Remember when you finally got there and were hit with the surprising realization that youth is actually fleeting, and adulthood is a very long journey full of responsibility and repetition? Poet Hunter Hazelton does.
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Flagstaff-based writer Andie Francis is the featured writer in the latest installment of KNAU's series PoetrySnaps! In her poem When My Head Hangs Too Low, Francis weaves together landscape, grief, and love for a brother she hadn’t seen in many years. It’s set at Gates Pass in the Tucson Mountains. If you’ve ever been there, you know it’s a truly sublime place to watch the sunset.
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In the latest installment of KNAU's series PoetrySnaps!, we meet Sean Avery Medlin, a writer and educator based in southern Arizona. Since their teen years, Medlin has used writing as a form of self-expression and a way to make sense of the world around them. Medlin’s work is a fluid mixture of poetry, raps and musicality, and they are always blurring the lines and mixing things up.
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A group of 5th graders at Marshall Elementary School in Flagstaff is anxiously awaiting this week’s announcement of the winners of NPR’s Student Podcast Challenge. They are among the youngest competitors in the 5th annual contest. Their teacher, Katie Krause, created a podcast area in her classroom for the kids to get creative.
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In the latest installment of KNAU's series PoetrySnaps!, we meet poet and environmental educator David Martin. He believes poetry is “artful communication and connectivity” to each other, ourselves, and the natural world. Today, he shares an excerpt of his poem The Ground Nest.
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Colorado River guides who are in relationships with other Colorado River guides are sometimes on the water at the same time, but on different trips. It’s a unique, romantic kind of adventure being simultaneously separated and connected by the same body of water. Page-based poet Holly Sullivan captures the experience beautifully in her poem To You. Sullivan spent years as a boat swamper in the Grand Canyon and today shares her take on river love.
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A group of art education students at Northern Arizona University will debut a first-of-its-kind exhibit tonight’s at Flagstaff’s First Friday Art Walk. Onyx: An All-Black Art Exhibition features the work of five local Black artists. It started off as a class research project on cultural competency and evolved into a multi-media art history project to elevate Black artists and recognize the contributions of the Black community to Flagstaff’s history.
