Meet our 2024 speakers

Ibrahim Nash’at grew up in Cairo, Egypt and has worked across the Middle East and Europe with Deutsche Welle, Al Jazeera, Voice of America, and others. In the wake of the United States’ chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, Nash’at managed to gain access to the Kabul airport and film within the ranks of the Taliban for a year, following soldiers who become generals and generals who become totalitarians. His astonishing observational film, Hollywoodgate, an official selection of the Telluride Film Festival and the Venice Biennale, opens the Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference.

 

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.

Regina Bediako is an editor-at-large at KQED's Snap Studios, where she produces longform nonfiction stories for Snap Judgment, a national weekly radio program that reaches two million listeners via broadcast and podcast each month. She is also the managing editor at Snap's newest storytelling show, Mind Your Own with Lupita Nyong'o. Previously, Regina wrote and produced dozens of digital, TV, and print features for outlets like HuffPost, Investigation Discovery, USA Today, NHK Japan Broadcasting and Epic Digital/Vox Creative. She is based in Oakland, California and enjoys nerding out on storytelling devices via TVTropes.org.

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 Swingin' 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.

Sarah Hepola is the host/creator of the America's Girls podcast, about the cultural impact and lost history of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. She is a staff writer at the Dallas Morning News and the author of the bestselling memoir, Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget.

Tim Z. Hernandez is an award-winning author, research scholar, and performer. His work includes fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, and he is the recipient of the American Book Award, and the International Latino Book Award. His work has been featured in the New York Times, C-Span, the Los Angeles Times, National Public Radio, and elsewhere. In 2018 California Senate recognized Hernandez for his research on locating the victims of the 1948 plane wreck at Los Gatos Canyon, an incident made famous by Woody Guthrie’s song of the same name. His books, All They Will Call You, and the sequel, They Call You Back, chronical that tale. Hernandez holds an M.F.A. in Writing & Literature from Bennington College, and he is an Associate Professor with the University of Texas El Paso’s Bilingual Creative Writing program. He lives in El Paso, Texas with his two children. You can find more info at www.timzhernandez.com.

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 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. 

Ernesto Londoño is a correspondent on the National desk of The New York Times, where he has worked since 2014. He is the author of Trippy: The Promise and Perils of Medicinal Psychedelics, a book that blends memoir and reportage to take readers inside a wondrous field that straddles spirituality and health care. Prior to working at The Times, Londoño worked at The Washington Post, where his assignments included covering the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Arab Spring and The Pentagon. His first job was at the Dallas Morning News..

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.

Azul Sordo is a visual journalist based in Dallas, Texas. She is currently a video intern for the Dallas Morning News. She previously interned at U.S. News and World Report, Texas Tribune and KERA. Sordo is a 2023 graduate of the Mayborn School of Journalism at the University of North Texas. Much of her work focuses on culture, immigration and women's issues.

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. Ballí was recently selected as a 2025 New America Fellow.

Brandon Gaesser is a musician, filmmaker, and Assistant Professor for documentary cinematography in the department of Media Arts at the University of North Texas. Gaesser’s documentary work, which emphasizes grass-roots storytelling, focuses on environmental issues such as ecosystem degradation, water/air/soil pollution, climate change, and environmental racism in films which explore the strained relationship between humans and nature. His work has been featured in Wrought Iron Productions, the Weather Channel, PBS, and the journal Nature. Gaesser holds an MFA in Documentary Film from Wake Forest University. His production company is Good Natured Films.

Bridget Grumet is the Metro columnist for the Austin American-Statesman, where she writes about issues ranging from voting access to homelessness to police officers’ use of force. She worked at the Tampa Bay Times from 2000-13, first as a local government reporter, then as a suburban bureau editor, before moving to Austin, TX. As a columnist and member of the Statesman’s Editorial Board, she has received top opinion-writing honors from the Headliners Foundation of Texas, Texas Managing Editors, America’s Newspapers and the Society of Professional Journalists.

Tania Khalaf, born in Beirut, Lebanon, began her career as a TV producer and film editor before moving to Texas. Khalaf’ documentary, narrative, and experimental films have screened internationally at venues in Australia, Germany, France, Italy, England, Tunisia, Lebanon, Turkey, Venezuela, and Trinidad and Tobago. Among her awards are Best Documentary Short at the Austin Film Festival, Best Documentary Feature and Humanitarian Award at the Third World Indie Film Festival, Best Music Video at IX Encuentro Para Cinandeacute, Best Animation at ARFF Paris International Award, and Special Jury Prize at the Beirut International Film Festival. Her works have also aired on PBS in the United States and Rotana TV throughout the Middle East. Khalaf is founder and director of the first Arab Film Festival in Texas. She is a Professor at the University of North Texas and Interim Director of the Master of Fine Arts Program in Documentary Production and Studies.

Michael Merschel has worked for three decades in journalism, including 12 years as books editor for The Dallas Morning News. He is also the author of the novel Revenge of the Star Survivors, which won the Texas Institute of Letters’ award for best middle-grade book in 2018. Previously, he contributed to public radio’s “A Prairie Home Companion” and composed an out-of-office reply that was mentioned in The New York Times and featured on NPR. He now writes for American Heart Association News. Learn more about him, if you dare, at merschel.net.

Gayle Reaves is a former editor-at-large of the Texas Observer and veteran of 50 years in Texas journalism. Reaves has worked as editor and reporter at big dailies, small papers, and for online publications. She was on a Pulitzer Prize-winning team at the Dallas Morning News. Among other honors, Reaves has received a George Polk Award for courageous regional reporting on drug-related corruption in South Texas. 

Dianne Solis is a freelance writer and a former staff writer and foreign correspondent at The Dallas Morning News and The Wall Street Journal, with a passion for America's origin stories, including immigration, race, and justice. Solis has deep knowledge of Mexico, migration, economics, housing, and legal due process. Her work has been featured on KERA, the Texas Standard, NPR, and NBC5-DFW. She holds journalism degrees from Northwestern University and California State University and was a Nieman fellow at Harvard.

Christopher Wynn is the Assistant Manager Editor for Specialty Reporting and Innovation at The Dallas Morning News. He oversees the teams and coverage in Arts & Entertainment, Food, Sports, Business and Photo. He runs The News' podcasting program and works with outside agents to develop the newspaper's content for Hollywood. He is also the host and co-creator of the storytelling podcast Strange.

Jeff Whittington is a songwriter, singer/guitarist, media producer and consultant. He’s performed with and written songs for Caulfield Manifesto, Adam’s Farm, Deep Blue Something, and The Hundred Inevitables. He’s the singer and guitarist for Legendary Psycho Pony - a Neil Young Revue. His self-titled solo album, WHITTINGTON, recorded with Grammy award-winning producer Stuart Sikes, was released in 2013. In 2018 Jeff retired from a 22-year public radio career at KERA-Dallas and currently writes and travels full-time in a van with his wife, Nicole, and dog, Elli.

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. 

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.