JASON THRASHER (BFA ’99)
the meticulous way she approaches the task of writing, the lavish detail, the incredible use of primary-source documents.” “What Valerie demonstrates to the students is that you cannot write that way unless you have already researched that way.” Joining Boyd as faculty for the program are Moni Basu, a senior enterprise reporter for CNN Digital with a 26year background in newspaper reporting and editing, and John T. Edge (M ’86), a well-known food writer, director of the Southern Foodways Alliance at
the University of Mississippi, and a contributing editor at Garden & Gun. The narrative nonfiction program’s journalism-based emphasis and strong core faculty attracted 11 students in its first year, many of whom are seasoned reporters. (Boyd expects to fill the second class with the maximum number of students, 15, in August.) “It’s hard reporting of facts, but telling it in a literary way, so that’s what’s appealing,” says Rosalind Bentley, a student in the program and an AJC reporter for more than a decade.
Karen Thomas, also a student in the program, spent 25-plus years at daily newspapers before becoming a professor in Southern Methodist University’s journalism program. But she’d long wanted to make the transition to books and other long-form writing. Thomas didn’t need another degree—she already has a master’s from Columbia University—but after meeting Boyd at a writer’s conference, she was eager to work with her. “It was all about Valerie,” she says. “I find her an incredible journalist and writer and thinker.”
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