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Intersection - My Life My Town

Beatriz Costa-Lima

 This week we’re talking about a project called My Life My Town, which documents the lives of young people living in rural Missouri. It started back in 2011, when Columbia Missourian photo desk  and KBIA staff decided to work together to help students tell stories through images and sound. This past school year new teams of photographers and radio reporters went out to follow up with some of the people who participated in that project and to document the lives of  more young people living in small towns. 

We'll hear excerpts from some of those new stories and then talk with Brian Kratzer of the Columbia Missourian, student editor Ashley Reese and returning documentary participant Trinity Rainey. When My Life My Town first shared Trinity's story, she was one of a handful of openly gay students at her high school in Macon, Missouri. She told us how her life has changed, what it was like participating in two documentaries and how she keeps one foot in rural Missouri. 

Sara Shahriari was the assistant news director at KBIA-FM, and she holds a master's degree from the Missouri School of Journalism. Sara hosted and was executive producer of the PRNDI award-winning weekly public affairs talk show Intersection. She also worked with many of KBIA’s talented student reporters and teaches an advanced radio reporting lab. She previously worked as a freelance journalist in Bolivia for six years, where she contributed print, radio and multimedia stories to outlets including Al Jazeera America, Bloomberg News, the Guardian, the Christian Science Monitor, Deutsche Welle and Indian Country Today. Sara’s work has focused on mental health, civic issues, women’s and children’s rights, policies affecting indigenous peoples and their lands and the environment. While earning her MA at the Missouri School of Journalism, Sara produced the weekly Spanish-language radio show Radio Adelante. Her work with the KBIA team has been recognized with awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and PRNDI, among others, and she is a two-time recipient of funding from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
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