Salon has hired two award-winning writers to fill full-time positions, editor in chief Erin Keane announced today. Culture writer Alison Stine, a journalist and essayist and the Philip K. Dick Award-winning author of two acclaimed novels, joins the staff on December 1. Investigative reporter Kathryn Joyce, author of two indispensable reported nonfiction books on the American Christian right, will join the News & Politics team on January 3.
"Alison Stine and Kathryn Joyce are both gifted journalists whose reporting skills and critical acumen will add crucial context and nuance to our writing on the most significant issues, people, and movements in culture and politics today," Keane wrote in an announcement to staff this week.
"Kathryn's vital reporting on right-wing politics, and especially its intersection with conservative Christian power, adds another urgently important layer to our in-depth coverage of the American right," Keane continued. "Alison's a triple threat: she's an astute culture critic, an experienced journalist covering poverty and health justice issues, and, as her compelling novels show, she knows how to write a damn good story."
Joyce, author of "Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement," and "The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking and the New Gospel of Adoption," will join Salon from Political Research Associates, a think tank dedicated to research and analysis of far-right movements and ideology, where she serves as editor of the quarterly magazine The Public Eye. She has been a contributing editor at The New Republic, and her freelance writing has appeared in The New York Times, HuffPost, The Atlantic, Mother Jones, The Nation, Salon and other publications. Her investigative reporting often focuses on how conservative religious and political movements overlap, from the rise of the "radical traditionalist" Catholic Right to right-wing attacks on public education and public health.
A 2011 Knight-Luce Fellow in Global Religion Reporting, Joyce has also been awarded residencies and fellowship support by the Nation Institute Investigative Fund, the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting, the MacDowell Colony, and the Bellagio Center. Her awards include a Wilbur for best magazine writing about religion and a Maggie for reproductive rights reporting, and she has been a finalist for the Livingston Award.
Stine has been a contributing editor at the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and the associate editor of state and regional reporting at Rewire.News. She has written for the New York Times, VQR, and The Guardian, as well as for Salon, where she has contributed critical essays on the film adaptation of "Hillbilly Elegy," the TV series "Only Murders in the Building" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." She has also covered culture through a disability lens in stories for Catapult, The Washington Post and Food52.
A recipient of an Individual Artist Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a reporting grant from National Geographic to write about issues faced by the deaf and hard of hearing during the pandemic, Stine was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and received the Studs Terkel Award for Media and Journalism for her story, "The Last Days of Appalachian Poverty Tour," published in Topic. Her first novel "Road Out of Winter" won the 2021 Philip K. Dick Award, and her latest, "Trashlands," is out now from MIRA/HarperCollins.
Other recent changes in the newsroom include Nicole Karlis' promotion to senior writer for health and science, and Mary Elizabeth Williams stepping away from directing Salon's on- and off-site community platforms to return to writing full-time on food, health and science, as well as hosting "Salon Talks," Salon TV's flagship show.
Shares