***This story appeared in the Bristol Herald Courier on Tuesday, Apr 08, 2008.***
Preston Gannaway, who won a Pulitzer Prize for feature photography on Monday, studied her craft at Virginia Intermont College and started her career at a Southwest Virginia newspaper.
"I loved working there," said Gannaway, who won a Pulitzer for photos depicting a family coping with terminal illness while she was a photojournalist with the Concord Monitor in New Hampshire.
According to a Monitor article, Gannaway and reporter Chelsea Conaboy were asked to document the final days of Carolyne St. Pierre, who had cancer.
They put the work together in a series of five articles called "Remember Me" that ran from October 2006 to December 2007. Gannaway, originally from North Carolina, won for 19 pictures she took as a part of the series.
She said on Monday night that her background in fine arts photography from Virginia Intermont in Bristol aided her efforts. "It has kind of given me a different way of looking at things," said Gannaway, who graduated from VI in 2000. "I wouldn't trade that for the world."
After graduation, Gannaway spent two years working at the Coalfield Progress. She has been working at the Monitor since 2003 and is expected to start a job at Denver's Rocky Mountain News this week.
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To see Gallaway's prize-winning photos, click here:
http://www.pulitzer.org/year/2008/feature-photography/works/
For the inside story behind Gannaway's Pulitzer Prize, click here:
http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080408/OPINION/804080347/0/FRONTPAGE
