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Among her duties, the Willmar native is covering school board meetings, writing feature stories, and taking feature and news pictures for the Press.

She graduated with a degree in media communications from Bethel University in 2002 and has worked as a news director for a radio station in Sioux Falls, S.D., while attending Augustana College, and as a radio personality at Q102 in Willmar.

Her job as news director "required me to pay attention to the world on a level I had not up to that point," she said. "A fascination that developed was one of curiosity, duty, and pure adoration for being informed. News, to me, became a necessity in a way I had not recognized before."

After living in Greenwich Village in New York City (where she worked in a restaurant and sold poetry) and in Schaumburg, Ill., (where she worked for a print media firm) she returned to Minnesota in 2006. She started working at the Press in March.

She believes everyone has a story to tell.

"Now, I find myself telling some of these stories. Fascination still remains, and it has become a life purpose, for which I am grateful daily," she said.

"Paynesville is a remarkably pleasant town full of remarkably pleasant people," she continued. "Everywhere I go, I am greeted with smiles and welcomed with hospitality. There is no other place in the world I would rather be."

In her spare time, she writes music, poetry, and prose and plays the guitar.