Amelia Ferrell Knisely covers poverty for Mountain State Spotlight, a nonprofit newsroom in West Virginia. Knisely, a native of Rand, West Virginia, started her career in her home state then served as editor of The Contributor in Nashville, a nonprofit street paper sold by men and women experiencing homelessness. She later covered education for The Tennessean. Most recently, as a Report for America corps member at the Charleston Gazette-Mail, she documented the state’s thousands of homeless students, forcing political leaders to start looking for solutions to the problem. Knisely was named a 2020-21 press fellow by nonprofit Save The Children for her ongoing reporting on child hunger. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Shepherd University and a master’s degree from Marshall University.

Amelia was winner of the NPF Poverty & Inequality Reporting Award for her work described here.