Photo by Zoë McGrane
Kristin Fellows
Writer, photographer & documentary film consultant
Background & Education
I have worked in the storytelling business for decades as a documentary film consultant on more than 100 films for PBS on a vast array of topics. I am also a professional photographer and published travel writer.
In addition to the US and Portugal, I have lived and worked in London where, among other pursuits, I spent weeks decapitating strawberries for the Wimbledon Tennis Tournament, and in Paris, where I worked for TIME Magazine correspondent, George Taber (author of The Judgement of Paris.)
I have a Smithsonian Associates World Art History Certificate and a cherished diploma from Álfaskólinn, the Icelandic Elf School in Reykjavik.
Educated in both England and the US, I graduated high school in London. In addition to my undergrad degree from Gettysburg University, I have participated in numerous courses at the “Great Smokies” writing program at the University of North Carolina.
After 18 years in Asheville, North Carolina, I moved in 2023 to a small farming village in central Portugal but continue to toggle back and forth between the US and Europe for work assignments.
Writing
My feature stories and travel articles about Portugal’s unusual bookstores, Emperor Haile Selassie’s first hamburger in Ethiopia; hiking with trolls & elves in Iceland; getting burned by the sauna culture in Helsinki; the art of letting one thing lead to another in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico; Loving Athens in a recession; the magic of not being in control in Denmark; and The Unbearable Lightness of Being (photographing fetal demises) in Asheville – have been published by:
Atlas Obscura
Portugal Living Magazine
Inktank
Asheville’s Mountain XPress
Tadias Magazine
Pink Pangea
In 2019, I was a semi-finalist in Atlas Obscura’s “First Journey” Competition ($15,000 prize)
In 2023, I received an International Solas Award in the category of Adventure Travel Writing for my feature, “Getting Naked with a Dragon in Finland”
Books in Progress
A STORYBOARD LIFE: The unlikely tale of how $20 and some magical thinking led to a 30-year career in film, one frame at a time.
And, the unanticipated experiences of my new life as a digital nomad in Portugal are chronicled in my blog, PORTUGUESE INTERLUDE, which has already attracted more than 20,000 views from all over the world along with hundreds of comments.
LIONS, PEACOCKS & LEMON TREES – Two worlds unfold: One, Ethiopia in the 1940s and 50s – under the rule of the last emperor in the legendary two-thousand-year Solomonic Dynasty that began with King Solomon’s nocturnal visit to the Queen of Sheba. The other, the reality of Ethiopia in the new millennium – an impoverished third world country still in the fragmented dust of its former emperor's once global vision, now struggling to emerge from the valley between its peaks of greatness. Into these two worlds venture two American women, both in their 50s. One comes to the first world to be by the side of her husband, an advisor newly appointed to Emperor Haile Selassie. The other arrives nearly sixty years later in search of the first woman's life, whatever traces she can find of it in the dust of these ancient Abyssinian highlands. One will survive her Ethiopian experience, and one will not...
A book on my Asheville years, as seen from the alternative & fringey side of town – ASHEVILLE INSIDE OUT – is in the works.
Photography
My photograph, “Sky Walker” was chosen as a National Geographic ‘Photo of the Day’ (2015).
15 of my street journalism photographs have been picked up by the Asheville Citizen Times.
One of my photographs selected as cd cover art for Blue Ridge Mountain Night – music by Hattie Wilcox & Christopher Gannon Marion.