Jess is an audio producer in New York City. A former staff producer for the public radio program BackStory, she has freelanced for Deutsche Welle, PRI’s The World, and Guernica, among others. In 2009, she was awarded a Watson Fellowship to spend a year exploring radio and reconciliation in post-conflict societies around the world. While her work is wide-ranging, she’s particularly interested in how people make sense of war, violence, and other painful histories. Her radio documentary Sterilized — about the history of eugenic sterilization in Virginia — won a 2016 Edward R. Murrow award for feature reporting. In addition to reporting, Engebretson spent several years teaching radio in Liberia (2009-11) and South Sudan (2014-15). Engebretson earned her BA from Swarthmore College, and her MA and MPhil from Columbia University. She is currently a PhD candidate in Columbia’s Department of English & Comparative Literature, where she researches sovereignty and human rights in the literature of the Nigerian Civil War.
