Bright Lights. Big City. Vintage Clips.
I started writing and editing in New York City. If you can make it writing there, you can make it anywhere.
When I moved to NYC in August of 2005, I'd never even seen the city. I packed up my things, hopped on a plane and touched down in the Big Apple with about two week's time to find an apartment before starting my graduate studies at New York University. Moving from Tennessee to New York was quite an ordeal to say the least. But ultimately I settled into a one bedroom efficiency at 61st Street and 2nd Avenue (an apartment that now probably costs more than 4 months of my current mortgage) and began my journey as a "big city writer". Studying magazine journalism taught me to be sharp, flexible, tenacious and thorough. And so those learned skills, coupled with creativity and curiosity I like to think I was born with, lead me to write and report on a myriad of different topics. I covered everything from chocolate bars in Union Square to business development in Spanish Harlem and from 9/11 survivor stories at Ground Zero to burlesque and pole dancing in the Village. I was t
he first student in my graduate program class to land a full-time, on-staff position at national publication. I started working for CosmoGIRL! about halfway through my master's program. There I penned the magazine's first monthly environmental column, and helped edit the magazine's cornerstone feature: Project 2024-- a call to action to prepare young girls for leadership with the goal of seeing a woman in the White House by 2024 (Spoiler Alert: It's Happening! #KamalaHarris). After CG!, I served as Assistant Editor for Soap Opera Weekly and Senior Editor for teen Pixie, a teen magazine I helped launch that quickly became the company’s number one seller at newsstand. While in NYC my work was featured in Glamour, the New York Post, Hallmark Magazine and Southern Women to name a few.
How it started...
“I covered everything from chocolate bars in Union Square to business development in Spanish Harlem and from 9/11 survivor stories at Ground Zero to burlesque and pole dancing in the Village.”
Though my road as a writer and creative has had it's twists and turns, the foundation I built in New York continues to support my continual growth and helps me to expand on skills I now use to tell unique stories, create transformative experiences and connect dynamic communities.
How It's Going...
These days my writing looks less like hanging out with teen music stars getting the deets on their most embarrassing moments and more like in-depth interviews with local heroes who are working to make my hometown city of Memphis. TN more clean, green and sustainable. I love the work I'm doing now! And I'm looking forward to sharing more of what I do here in this space. But as writer and poet extraordinaire Maya Angelou once said, "You can't really know where you're going until you know where you've been." And for that sagacious reason, and many others, I pay homage to my start, honor my present, and look forward to my future. Stay tuned.
“You can't really know where you're going until you know where you've been.” - Maya Angelou
#CosmoGIRL #BornToLead #NYU #Magazines #DisneyGames #BrightLightsBigCity #HearstMagazines #SoapOperaWeekly
