As most of you probably know, I majored in journalism. My concentration was in photo and video, but I did my fair share of writing as well.

Today, I wanted to take the time to talk about some of my published work—both creative and journalistic—and share the pieces that I’m most proud of!

There are three categories I kind of consider when it comes to my published stuff:

1. Work published through a particular class in the journalism school
2. Blog-type content published through an outside organization
3. Creative writing (poems or prose) published through a university publication

When it comes to the first type, I was in two different classes throughout my time at the UNC School of Media & Journalism (now named the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media!) where we worked with local publications to publish our work. The first was called “Community Journalism” taught by the fantastic Jock Lauterer. The class itself focused on writing for the newspaper Jock started, The Durham VOICE, a community news publication serving Northeast Central Durham. I was mainly a photographer, but wrote a little as well. Here are my favorite articles:

• Walltown Children’s Theatre dazzles with the “Durham Nutcracker”
• Dinner and Fashion Show highlights the growing Liberian population

The second class was one I took my very last semester at UNC called “Media Hub.” The brilliant John Robinson taught the capstone class that focused on creating content on both the state and national level. Each team had a reporting major, a broadcast major, a graphic design major, and finally (me) a photographer. We also had a PR person for the class who worked on getting outside publications to publish our work. (Shoutout to the amazing Jennifer, go follow her on Instagram!) I took some of my favorite photos in my time in Media Hub and will always cherish how freaking wonderful it was to be a part of. Here is the cream of the crop:

• As homeschool enrollment grows, NC’s monitoring is lax
• Taking men to the mat: N.C. girls break up the wrestling boys club

Finally, I did work for The Daily Tar Heel (the iconic Chapel Hill newspaper) for about six months. Almost all my friends were a part of it, so I figured I may as well be too! I was strictly a photographer and only had a couple of lame photos published. Here’s one that isn’t so lame… for obvious reasons. 😉

On to category two: The Odyssey and The Tab. Both were online publications that worked with college students to write cool blog type-content.

I’m well aware The Odyssey was super annoying… if you don’t know what it was, just think “An open letter to ____”. Those were basically all the articles on there. Hell, I even wrote some too. That being said, here are the pieces I’m actually sort of proud of:

• An Open Letter To The Kids Who Want To Grow Up Too Fast
• Dear Little Sister
• Dear Youth Group
• I’m A Girl Who Is Addicted To Marvel Films
• Wonder Woman Is The Film We’ve Needed For Years
• I like professional wrestling and I’m not afraid to admit it

Working with The Tab was one of the best experiences I had at UNC. While the UNC section of The Odyssey was entirely online and involved no human interaction, The Tab UNC involved actual journalism. We met once a week as a group, and I got to know some of the most amazing humans ever through it. [s/o to the always supportive Jess!] (Plus I got to go take photos of Obama, so dream come true.)

After being a writer for a little bit, I became a News Editor, then a Feature Editor. In 2016 I even did The Tab Summer Fellowship Program, which involved writing one story a week for the national page. In total, I wrote around 40 pieces for them and adored my time there. Here are my faves:

• Depression doesn’t go away when bad things stop happening
• How I overcame the panic attacks I got every time I tried to sleep
• I like Black Friday just as much as Thanksgiving
• What it’s like being a Chapel Hill native who goes to UNC
• What it’s like being in an interracial relationship in the South
• Why we should appreciate our high school friends

Finally, we come to my creative writing work. I spoke about my time in the UNC creative writing program both on a podcast episode and in a blog post, so I won’t harp on it any more here. Essentially, I didn’t have too much luck when it came to submitting my work to university publications. I never made it into the main literary magazine, but I did get a poem of mine published in The Health Humanities Journal, a new publication at the time.

I also published an earlier revision of that same poem in The Charles Carter – a working anthology, a small campus literary site. Here is a short prose piece that also made it on there.

Phew, that was a lot. In reality though, I don’t really have much published work when it comes to the field I intend to be in. Now that I’m out of school, I need to be better about continuing to submit work into contests, etc…

So, why did I even bother sharing all this? Mostly, I just wanted an excuse to share some of my favorite pieces that don’t get any love anymore. My work is spread across the internet in various places, and I’m (mostly) proud of it all.

I hope you check out some of my work and I’ll see you back here very soon. 🙂