Melina Walling
Melina Walling is a writer, photographer and environmental storyteller who loves words, deep conversations and this planet we call home.
Born in Long Beach, CA, Melina spent her childhood in Las Vegas, Nevada, where a landscape of red rocks and searing heat inspired her imagination to run wild. She moved with her family to Wayne, Pennsylvania when she was 13 and discovered humidity, fireflies and the color green for the first time. She returned to the West Coast to attend Stanford University and graduated with a B.A. in English and an M.A. in Environmental Communication in June 2021.
Her work and studies have taken her across disciplines—literature, environmental science, history, art—and across modes of storytelling, from audio to visual to all types of writing. The summer 2021 Boyd’s Station Writing Fellow, she has previously worked as a contributor for Forbes, a newsroom intern at the Bucks County Courier Times and Doylestown Intelligencer, an editorial intern at the Bill Lane Center for the American West and Stanford Magazine, an associate producer for the Stanford Storytelling Project, and a columnist at The Stanford Daily.
Melina loves tackling stories that address the nuances and complexities of a culturally and biologically diverse planet. She has reported on disproportionate geographic access to electric vehicle charging infrastructure; grassroots resistance to a pipeline carrying volatile materials; the intellectual disability community and COVID-19; challenges to achieving energy efficiency in communities of color and rural or low-income communities; risks posed to the elderly by climate change; and many others, which you can find on her website, melinawalling.com.
As a biracial woman—her mother is from Bangalore, India and her father is from Holland, Michigan—Melina believes people are rarely ever just one thing. She craves dialogue that digs beneath the surface. She seeks out intersections of disparate ideas, and believes that the collective action necessary for healing must be rooted in deep empathy and respect. In her spare time, she enjoys hiking, yoga, swimming, loose leaf tea, writing letters, and anything involving animals.
Melina became a Boyd’s Station Associate with American Reportage in July 2021.