Melanie Stetson Freeman
GRANTEE
Melanie Stetson Freeman has been a staff photographer with The Christian Science Monitor since 1985. While covering news and feature assignments, she has visited every continent and more than 80 countries including Afghanistan, Antarctica, the Soviet Union, Iraq, South Africa, India, and the Galapagos Islands in Ecuador—twice.
Stetson Freeman has a Master of Arts in journalism from the University of Missouri, Columbia, and a Bachelor of Arts from Principia College in Elsah, Illinois, where she majored in history. Before joining the Monitor, she worked for the Orange County Register in Santa Ana, California, and interned at the San Jose Mercury News in California, The Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville, Florida, and the Simi Valley Enterprise in California.
Her favorite assignments include photographing (and hand feeding) black bears in northern Minnesota, following a Russian orphan from her orphanage outside Moscow to a new home with a family in America; following a teenage Mexican-American migrant girl from the challenges of her high school years, to her marriage and the birth of her daughter, to college graduation, and to becoming an elementary school teacher; and following a young South African couple who took in six children orphaned by AIDS.
Stetson Freeman's favorite things include Zumba, roller coasters, scuba diving, Springsteen concerts, Mountain Dew, animals of all kinds (especially cats), and tribal art.
