Emily Fagan is a 2020 graduate from the Writing department at the University of Victoria, and was Editor-in-Chief of The Martlet, UVic’s independent student newspaper, from 2019 to 2020. She led a team of student-journalists that won two national journalism awards last year, and oversaw the editorial production of the bi-weekly newspaper that reported on news on campus and the surrounding Victoria area.
Currently, she’s a freelance reporter based in Victoria, and has written various articles for large publications such as VICE, the CBC, and The Tyee.
In this episode, we talk about Emily's recent freelancing, and specifically a story she wrote for The Tyee about a community group building showers for the unhoused in Victoria. Emily discusses how that story came to be, what it was like taking her own pictures for it, why she decided to pitch it to The Tyee, along with her passion to write about social issues. We also dive into Emily's work at The Martlet, a place where she and I started writing together at in 2016, and reminisce about stories when we started there, the challenges and lessons learned of being the Editor-in-Chief, and winning two national student journalism awards last year. Finally, we talk about what inspired Emily to pursue a writing career, a couple favourite pieces she's written so far, and some other young writers she looks up to.
You can follow Emily on Twitter @thatemfagan