Melodie Edwards serves as the host and lead producer of The Modern West, a narrative podcast distributed by PRX and Wyoming Public Media that examines the evolving identity of the American frontier. She utilizes a slow-journalism approach to blend personal memoir with field interviews, as evidenced in her recent Mending the Hoop series detailing Indigenous rematriation and the Land Back movement. Her reporting on the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (#MMIW) crisis and Western land rights earned the production multiple Edward R. Murrow Awards and recognition from the Public Media Journalists Association. An award-winning reporter and published author, Edwards integrates academic expertise from her M.F.A. in Creative Writing with boots-on-the-ground research across the Wind River Reservation and Great Plains. Her work directly informs discourse on regional conservation and historical truth, moving narratives away from traditional mythology toward inclusive perspectives involving the Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone tribes.