Meet our 2024 speakers

	Thorne Anderson Thorne Anderson is Co-Director and Content Curator for the Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference. Anderson is a professor and Mayborn Endowed Chair for Narrative & Multimedia Journalism at the Mayborn School of Journalism at UNT. He has worked internationally as an independent photojournalist for publications including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune and Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, and Stern magazines. He is a co-author/photographer of Unembedded: Four Independent Photojournalists on the War in Iraq. Anderson is documentary filmmaker and frequent contributor of documentary shorts to public radio and television, for which he has been recognized with a national Edward R. Murrow award for excellence in video.
	Roxanna Asgardian Roxanna Asgarian is a Texas-based independent journalist who writes about child welfare and the law. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, New York, and Texas Monthly, among other publications. Her book, We Were Once a Family: Love, Death, and Child Removal in America, won the 2023 National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, the LA Times Book Prize for Current Interest, and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction.
	Caitlin Dickerson Caitlin Dickerson is an investigative reporter and feature writer for The Atlantic and the winner of the 2023 Pultizer Prize for Explanatory Reporting. Over the course more than a decade in journalism, Dickerson has also been awarded a Peabody, Edward R Murrow, Livingston, and Silvers-Dudley Prize for her writing and reporting. Before joining The Atlantic, she spent nearly five years as a reporter at The New York Times and five years as a producer and investigative reporter for NPR. Dickerson has reported on immigration, history, politics, and race in four continents and dozens of American cities. She is currently writing a book for Random House about the systemic impact of deportation on American society.
	Rustin Dodd Rustin Dodd is a writer at The Athletic — a sports website owned by The New York Times — and the co-author of Kingdom Quarterback: Patrick Mahomes, the Kansas City Chiefs, and How a Once Swinging’ Cow Town Chased the Ultimate Comeback. The book chronicles the rise of NFL quarterback Patrick Mahomes and the resurgence of Kansas City, a flyover town whose history was marked by a history of redlining and housing segregation. Dodd was also a Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan in 2023-24. He previously worked as a sports writer at The Kansas City Star, where his work was honored by the Associated Press Sports Editors. He joined The Athletic in 2018. He grew up in the Kansas City area and lives in Brooklyn, New York.
	Elise Hu Elise Hu is a Los-Angeles based journalist, podcast host and writer who spent nearly a decade at NPR and worked as a television correspondent for VICE News Tonight. Today, she’s a host-at-large for NPR, the regular host of TED Talks Daily, and co-host of the podcast Forever35. As an international correspondent, she reported from more than a dozen countries and opened NPR’s first-ever Seoul bureau in 2015. Her experiences in Seoul inspired her debut non-fiction book, Flawless: Lessons in Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty Capital. Before NPR, Elise helped found the nonprofit digital startup, The Texas Tribune, and spent more than a decade as a television news reporter.
	Scott C. Johnson Scott C. Johnson was a Newsweek foreign correspondent and Bureau Chief for over twelve years, reporting on politics and current affairs from over fifty countries on five continents. He has been the chief of Newsweek’s Mexico, Baghdad, and Africa bureaus, as well as a special correspondent from Paris. He was part of the team that contributed to Newsweek’s 2003 National Magazine Award for reportage of the Iraq war, and in 2004 the Overseas Press Club honored his reports on Latin America. He is the author of The Wolf and the Watchman: a Father, a Son, and the CIA and The Con Queen of Hollywood: The Hunt for an Evil Genius, which was debuted this year as a docuseries, “Hollywood Con Queen,” for Apple TV.
	Brittany McElroy Brittany Pieper McElroy is Co-Director for this year’s Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference overseeing logistics, sponsorships, and grants. She is an award-winning multimedia journalist, having worked in television news as a reporter, anchor, and producer for a decade before she began teaching in the Mayborn School of Journalism at the University of North Texas. McElroy is the producer of a 5-part narrative podcast on pandemic parenting for DFW Child. She serves on the education committee for the Radio, Television, Digital News Association.
	Rena Pederson Rena Pederson is the author of The King of Diamonds, a true crime mystery of a Dallas jewel thief who got away with millions in missing jewels during the swinging, oil-rich Sixties. Pederson is Editor at Large and former Vice President and Editorial Page Editor at The Dallas Morning News. She has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and has served for nine years on the Pulitzer Prize Board of Directors. Pederson’s journalism has been published in many magazines and newspapers, and Texas Monthly named her one of the "Most Powerful Women in Texas." Pederson has also taught at Southern Methodist University and served as Senior Advisor for Strategic Communications for the U.S. State Department.

Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference

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