Audio editor & producer / reporter & writer
Currently, I produce and edit Live Wire, a weekly arts & culture public radio show and podcast from PRX.
I’m also a freelance reporter for Marketplace, NPR, and The Guardian.
Previously, I’ve reported for the BBC World Service, CBC, Deutsche Welle, Monocle Radio (M24), Pacific Standard and the Toronto Star, amongst others.
I also worked in programming for a number of film festivals, including Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival and the Berlin International Film Festival, where I was the assistant to the head of programming at the Berlinale Talent Campus. I was also a project coordinator for the Institute of Documentary Film in Prague, Czech Republic, where I helped develop and promote documentaries by Eastern European filmmakers.
From 2011 to 2014, I produced Berlin Stories for NPR, a multimedia journal about the German capital broadcast on NPR Berlin (currently KCRW Berlin).
My debut poetry collection I Still Go to Bed with Water was published by Unsolicited Press in 2022. One of its poems, “Six Months at Most,” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
My poetry chapbook We Slept in Body Bags, Just in Case was published in 2013 by Finishing Line Press, while my poetry and short fiction has appeared in several literary publications, including Permafrost Magazine, Rise Up Review, Poetry Quarterly, Verse Daily, Black Heart Magazine, apt, The Fourth River, and more.
I’m also a distant relative of Ukrainian poet and artist Taras Shevchenko… at least it feels right to assume.
In 2014, I left my beloved Berlin to chase stories in Portland, Oregon, where I currently reside. In my off-time, I’m usually lighting bonfires in backyards or buried under my 15-pound orange tabby.
MELANIE SEVCENKO 