Biography
Gwen Thompkins is a New Orleans-born journalist, writer and first-year PhD student in History at Tulane University. Dr. Randy Sparks is her faculty advisor.
Since 2012, Thompkins has been the executive producer and host of the public radio program Music Inside Out with Gwen Thompkins, which showcases the unusually varied musical landscape of Louisiana. Thompkins was the longtime senior editor of NPR’s Weekend Edition with Scott Simon and later NPR’s East Africa bureau chief, based in Nairobi, Kenya. Following a fellowship at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, she returned to New Orleans full-time. Her interviews and stories have been featured in The New Yorker online, The Oxford American, NPR Music, WXPN’s World Café, The Strangers Guide, Tulanian Magazine, and The Massachusetts Review. She earned an undergraduate degree at Newcomb College/ Tulane University. Currently, she’s writing a book based on the Music Inside Out interviews. Find the full archive at: musicinsideout.org.