Melodie Edwards has covered a wide variety of Western topics from wildlife to Native American issues to agriculture to rural health. She is the recipient of two national PRNDI awards, one for her investigation of the reservation housing crisis, another for a civil discourse over a confrontation at a Gillette, Wyoming mosque. She’s also won numerous regional Edward R. Murrow Awards, two for “best use of sound.” Her work has also won two Native American Journalism awards.

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. They also ran an Orvis fly fishing store for several years. She graduated with an MFA from the University of Michigan on a Colby Fellowship and received two Hopwood Awards there for fiction and nonfiction. She is the recipient of the 2019 Pattie Layser Greater Yellowstone Fellowship, the Doubleday Wyoming Arts Council Award for Women and is the author of the young adult novel, Akorena & the League of Crows and Hikes Around Fort Collins.

Melodie and her husband own Night Heron Books and Coffeehouse in Laramie, Wyoming. She also loves to putz in the garden, and hike and ski in the mountains with her family.