Megan Kamerick
News DirectorMegan has been a journalist for 25 years and worked at business weeklies in San Antonio, New Orleans and Albuquerque. She first came to KUNM as a phone volunteer on the pledge drive in 2005. That led to volunteering on Women’s Focus, Weekend Edition and the Global Music Show. She was then hired as Morning Edition host in 2015, then the All Things Considered host in 2018. Megan was hired as News Director in 2021.
Prior to radio, Megan spent many years in print and online journalism and she moved into television with New Mexico PBS in 2012 where she produced “Public Square” and “New Mexico in Focus.” Megan also produced two podcasts with NMPBS, New Mexico Women and the Vote and Growing Forward: Cannabis and New Mexico, which she co-hosts with Andy Lyman of New Mexico Political Report and which is in its third season. Megan has produced stories for National Public Radio, Latino USA, Capital & Main and Marketplace. She’s passionate about getting women’s voices into media and is the former president of the Journalism & Women Symposium. Her TED talk on women and media has more than 350,000 views. She’s the treasurer for the Society of Professional Journalists’ Rio Grande Chapter. In the spare time she manages to scrape together she goes hiking with her husband, seeks out cool cultural happenings, goes to movies and travels.
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On this episode we talk with Deirdre Caparoso about explosion of challenges against libraries and books. She is outreach and community engagement librarian at the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Library and Informatics Center. She is also chair of the intellectual freedom committee for the New Mexico Library Association. -
A new film highlights the important role libraries play in small rural communities around New Mexico. Many of these organizations are independent and must raise their own operating funds, and they have become vital centers for the people they serve. -
Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade last year, more people are coming to New Mexico for abortions and lawmakers passed a bill to ensure access. But counties and local governments have passed ordinances to restrict abortion and at least one is suing to overturn that state law. On the next Let’s Talk New Mexico we get an update on all this. -
On this episode two women, one a recent University of New Mexico graduate and one a professor in the UNM Honors College, talk about overcoming some serious challenges and how they used those experiences to create. Professor Amaris Ketchum used comic-style diary entries to process her husband's kidney cancer. Her new book is "Unfiltered: A Cancer Year Diary." And new graduate Adrianna Morales has become a passionate advocate for supporting sexual assault survivors after finding a lack of support following her own assault. -
Irish author Colum McCann kicks off the second Santa Fe International Literary Festival Friday. He’s the author of seven novels, including “Let The Great World Spin” and “Transatlantic” and has won numerous awards. McCann’s books have been set all over the world, but they have common themes of human connection and the reparative power of storytelling. He tells KUNM that sometimes he chooses these topics and sometimes they choose him. -
On this episode a researcher talks about a new study that will use MDMA-assisted therapy to help new mothers with opioid addiction, and a new book re-examines humans impact on the environment. -
The 2023 legislative session is in the rearview mirror, but soon interim committee hearings will start up around the state in preparation for the 2024 session which begins next January. In this week’s show, we will talk about transparency, including several bills aimed at increasing transparency in government that recently succeeded or failed. We will also talk about the budget process and how it works, and how transparent it is – or is not. As the state continues to see record revenues, knowing how our money is spent is everybody’s business. -
On this episode we look at open educational resources. It's one way to curtail the steep costs college students face in buying text books. These are materials in the public domain or are under a license that allows them to be freely used, changed, or shared with others. We’ll hear from instructors at the University of New Mexico who are using and creating these materials and why they love them. -
Jerry Redfern with Capital & Main has been following energy and environmental issues this session and wrote about the ongoing problem with transparency in the budget process. He talks with KUNM about a bill that failed early in the session at the request of the All Pueblo Council of Governors and the debate over its lingering appropriation. -
Next month at the University of New Mexico a conference will bring together scholars, artists and performers to explore the speculative, a broad term for science fiction, fantasy and utopian/dystopian fiction.
