Gwen Thompkins is an award-winning journalist and writer, based in New Orleans. She’s currently working on a book about her long form public radio interview program Music Inside Out, which showcases the unusually varied musical landscape of Louisiana. (See: musicinsideout.org) Her work has been featured by NPR Music, The Oxford American, Strangers Guide, WXPN’s World Café, and The New Yorker online. Thompkins was a longtime senior editor of NPR’s Weekend Edition with Scott Simon and later headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya as NPR’s East Africa bureau chief. Currently, she is a PhD candidate in history at Tulane University.