Storytellers

Tina Firesheets is a freelance writer based in Jamestown. She was a reporter for the News & Record for nearly 15 years before leaving to devote more time to her toddler son and an aging parent. While at the News & Record, she covered a range of beats, including education, community news and retail. But it was her years as a feature writer that were the most fun and rewarding. Thatʼs when she got the chance to really share peopleʼs stories. Refugee families that were reunited after decades of separation. Wild food foragers in the community. A retired businessman who had written hundreds of poems scribbled on airline barf bags. As a freelance writer, she still shares interesting stories. One day sheʼd like to write about her own life growing up as the only Korean-American girl on the Cherokee Indian Reservation in Western North Carolina. Adopted by a Japanese mother and a European-American father, her mother was the only other Asian person she knew until she went to college.