Kristina's profile
Kristina R. Gaddy is an award-winning writer who believes in the power of narrative nonfiction to bring stories from the past to life in order to inform the world we live in today. Her new book Well of Souls: Uncovering the Banjo's Hidden History (W.W. Norton 2022) is an extraordinary story unfolding across two hundred years, where she uncovers the banjo’s key role in Black spirituality, ritual, and rebellion. Her debut nonfiction book Flowers in the Gutter (Dutton 2020), tells the true story of the teenage Edelweiss Pirates who fought the Nazis. Through narratives based on memoirs, oral history interviews, and Nazi documents, she immerses the reader in the world of these teenagers as they resist the Third Reich.
Her writing explores and highlights forgotten and marginalized histories. Her essay "Intersectional Landscapes" appears in A Harp in the Stars: An Anthology of Lyric Essays (University of Nebraska Press 2021). In 2018, Kristina received a Robert W. Deutsch Foundation Ruby's Artist Award to support the writing and researching of Well of Souls. She was also a 2019 Logan Nonfiction Fellow at the Carey Institute for Global Good and received a Parsons Award from the Library of Congress in 2020. In 2017, her story about a midwife in 1909 Baltimore was a finalist for Proximity Magazine's Narrative Journalism Prize. She co-wrote and co-produced a radio segment for the Marc Steiner Show on the legacy of one of Baltimore's most well-known Confederate monuments. She holds an MFA in Nonfiction Writing from Goucher College and her work has appeared in The Washington Post, Baltimore magazine, Washington City Paper, Baltimore Sun, Bitch Magazine, Narratively, Proximity, Atlas Obscura, OZY, Shore Monthly and other smaller history and music publications.
Her writing explores and highlights forgotten and marginalized histories. Her essay "Intersectional Landscapes" appears in A Harp in the Stars: An Anthology of Lyric Essays (University of Nebraska Press 2021). In 2018, Kristina received a Robert W. Deutsch Foundation Ruby's Artist Award to support the writing and researching of Well of Souls. She was also a 2019 Logan Nonfiction Fellow at the Carey Institute for Global Good and received a Parsons Award from the Library of Congress in 2020. In 2017, her story about a midwife in 1909 Baltimore was a finalist for Proximity Magazine's Narrative Journalism Prize. She co-wrote and co-produced a radio segment for the Marc Steiner Show on the legacy of one of Baltimore's most well-known Confederate monuments. She holds an MFA in Nonfiction Writing from Goucher College and her work has appeared in The Washington Post, Baltimore magazine, Washington City Paper, Baltimore Sun, Bitch Magazine, Narratively, Proximity, Atlas Obscura, OZY, Shore Monthly and other smaller history and music publications.
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