Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference

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Meet our 2023 speakers

We’re working on finalizing the speakers and panelists who will bring keen insights, experiences, and life to the Conference! Keep checking back for more updates as we finalize the lineup.

	Ceclilia Ballí Cecilia Ballí is a writer, journalist, and cultural anthropologist who writes about history, identity, race and ethnicity, culture, and the U.S.-Mexico border. Ballí was a writer-at-large for Texas Monthly for twenty years. She has also written for The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s Magazine, and the Columbia Journalism Review, among others. Her book in progress follows three of the most competitive high school mariachis in the country, based in tiny Starr County, Texas, preparing to compete in their biggest contest of the year, considered the national championship of school mariachis.
	Rodney Carmichael Rodney Carmichael is NPR Music's hip-hop staff writer. He was the creator and co-host of the podcast Louder Than A Riot, which deftly weaves narrative storytelling with criticism focusing on black cultural production and all its sociopolitical implications. Photo credit: Christian Cody
	Lane DeGregory Lane DeGregory writes human interest stories for the Tampa Bay Times. She has published more than 3,000 stories across a 30-year career during which she has won dozens of awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing. The Girl in the Window and Other True Tales, released in 2023, is an anthology of her work with tips for writing narrative nonfiction.
	Angel Ellis Angel Ellis is the Director of Mvskoke Media and a free press activist. She is the real-life hero protagonist of the Sundance award-winning film, Bad Press, a documentary thriller which documents the struggle she championed for an independent press withing the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. Ellis serves on the Oklahoma Media Center board, Native American Journalist Associations Board of Directors, and the SPJ Ethics Committee.
	Rebecca Landsberry Rebecca Landsberry-Baker is an enrolled citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and the executive director of the Native American Journalists Association. She is a recipient of the 2018 NCAIED “Native American 40 Under 40” award and was selected to the Harvard Shorenstein News Leaders Fall 2022 cohort. Landsberry-Baker made her directorial debut with the documentary feature film, BAD PRESS, which was supported by the Sundance Institute, Ford Foundation JustFilms, NBC, and the Gotham. BAD PRESS premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival and received the U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Freedom of Expression. The film was also recognized with the One in a Million Award from the 2023 Sun Valley Film Festival.
	Beth Macy Beth Macy is a Virginia-based journalist, the author of Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America, and an executive producer and cowriter on Hulu’s Peabody Award-winning “Dopesick” series. Photo credit: Josh Meltzer
	Brittney Martin Brittney Martin is an independent journalist based in Houston, Texas. She's the executive producer and co-host of Sugar Land, a new investigative podcast series from The Texas Newsroom. The podcast unspools the story of a community forced to confront its history of slavery and convict leasing. PROJECT SUMMARY: In 2018, construction crews building a new school in Sugar Land, Texas discovered a long-forgotten cemetery containing 95 graves. The investigative podcast series Sugar Land tells the story of these 95 people. Who were they? What happened to them? It’s a story that is just as much about them as it is about the people who have been trying to control them for over a century.
	Joe Peeler Joe Peeler is a Sundance award-winning director and editor whose work has appeared on NETFLIX, HBO, FX, ESPN, Hulu and CBS. Joe began his career apprenticing under legendary director Peter Bogdanovich, and from there edited Lucy Walker’s Academy Awards Shortlist documentary short The Lion’s Mouth Opens; multiple episodes of the Netflix original series Flint Town; and Margaret Brown’s SXSW premiere documentary short The Black Belt. Most recently, Joe co-directed Bad Press, which premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival and won the U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Freedom of Expression.
	Andrea Pitzer Andrea Pitzer is the author of Icebound: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World, which narrates the three Arctic voyages of Dutch navigator William Barents, and One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps, which was named a best history book of 2017 by Smithsonian Magazine. She has written for The Washington Post, The New York Review of Books, Outside, GQ, Slate, and elsewhere. Her reporting has taken her to four continents and on multiple expeditions to the Norwegian and Russian Arctic.
	Naomi Reed Naomi Reed is a sociocultural anthropologist who studies whiteness and Blackness and cultural heritage in Texas. Her primary focus has been on Sugar Land, Texas, US History curriculum, and the Sugar Land 95. She received her Ph.D. in African Diaspora Anthropology at The University of Texas at Austin. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas.
	Rosanna Xia Rosanna Xia weaves narrative storytelling with scientific reporting at the Los Angeles Times, where she specializes in environmental issues pertaining to the coast and ocean. She was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2020 for explanatory reporting, and her long-form multimedia investigation into a DDT dumpsite in the deep ocean has been anthologized in the "Best American Science and Nature Writing" series. Her first book, "California Against the Sea," comes out September 26, 2023.