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DIANE JOY SCHMIDT

I am a journalist, syndicated columnist,  photojournalist, storyteller, screenwriter, and educator, with a NEA Fellowship in Photography.

Mid-career I received an MFA, Screenwriting and New Media, 2019 Antioch University Santa Barbara as a Riskin Fellow, where I began writing  my semi-autobiographical film script, memoir and graphic memoir, Turquoise Mountain.

TURQUOISE MOUNTAIN

When a troubled photojournalist now Chicago cabbie meets a Navajo scientist and traditional farmer fighting genetically modified corn, she joins him in New Mexico for romance, spiritual healing, and possibly staving off apocalyptic Navajo prophecies but the greatest challenge is overcoming their cultural differences in order to stop a uranium mining plot. 

Turquoise Mountain, completed in 2022, has foreshadowed news that was just announced. The script turns on uncovering a plot to open new uranium mining using the desert aquifer at Crownpoint, New Mexico. May 1, 2023, the news story broke that new uranium mining is planned on the checkerboard area adjacent to the Navajo Nation right where the country’s worst uranium spill happened in 1979. As one knowledgeable expert said to me after hearing the news, “I always considered your story to be a work of fiction because [uranium] mining could never happen here again, right? I can’t understand how people can be so evil.

TURQUOISE MOUNTAIN  received 2024 finalist Beverly Hills Screenplay; “Top 100 Screenplays of 2022” Semifinalist, Scriptapalooza,  Semifinalist, Stowe Story Lab 2022; Austin Film Festival Recommend-Writer (Coverage); Second-Rounder, Launch Pad; placed in 2023 Final Draft Big Break Feature Diversity and Screencraft Feature; Semifinalist, Santa Barbara International Screenplay Awards, LA International Screenplay Awards, and  San Francisco Independent Film Festival. The first 5 pages of Turquoise Mountain were selected as one of 5 scripts  workshopped by The Writers Lab  founders Elizabeth Kaiden and Nitza Wilon for Get It Made, broadcast, October 6, 2022.  As a screenplay short, the first act “Making the Nut” placed finalist in San Francisco Film Festival and Shorts4U. 

listed:
Imdb   
Imdb Pro
top 6% Coverfly (8/23)

One month residency at Vashon Arts Residency, Vashon Island, WA, 2023, for graphic memoir, “On This Night”  made with my original photos. 

The 1st chapter ‘On This Night,’ of the graphic memoir, all using my original photos is based on my  Chicago Tribune Sunday Magazine cover story, “Night Moves,” about driving a taxi the night shift in Chicago, s awarded the NEA Visual Arts Fellowship in Photography. The larger story of Turquoise Mountain, to be completed in graphic narrative form, is inspired by my experiences working on the Navajo Nation over 25 years; my articles in the Navajo Times, awarded first place by the Native American Journalist Association and a public service award from the Arizona Press Club; and recent picture stories published in literary journals, “Red-tailed Hawk” in Another Chicago Magazine, “Spider” in Sweet: A Literary Confection, and “The Encounter: Budapest” in Geometry Journal.  

My photo books cumulatively have sold over 80,000 copies. They include the art monograph The Chicago Exhibition (Melrose, LA  and Braus, Munich), with conceptual artist Michele Fitzsimmons, a Tribune Top Ten best-seller. The photos have been published and exhibited internationally and a complete portfolio of the original 55 photographic silver-based prints comprising the book are in The Chicago History Museum and in private collections. The photographically illustrated children’s book Where’s Chimpy (Albert Whitman & Company), adopted by the Down Syndrome Congress. My photography is featured in the book “Chicago: Classic Photographs,”  by Richard Cahan, CityFiles Press/Chicago, 2017.

I have been in New Mexico since 1997, where in addition to my own work, I have been working together now over more than 25 years with Frank Morgan, a Navajo humanist and cultural linguist, and have photographically illustrated, designed and produced his Navajo bilingual health-care books and trainings for the Navajo Nation, on diabetes, foods and nutrients, suicide prevention and Navajo psychology, traveling throughout the Navajo Nation. 

additional social media links:
IMDB pro   
LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/diane-joy-schmidt-1a531556/
Twitter: @dianeschmidt22
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dianejoyschmidt

As a journalist and photojournalist I cover societal and environmental issues of the Southwest United States, with special coverage of  the Jewish community and the Navajo Nation, for national and regional publications. 

They include  Tikkun Magazine, Navajo Times, Gallup Independent, Lilith, Intermountain Jewish News, New Mexico Jewish Link,  Hadassah Magazine,  and earlier, The Chicago Tribune and Tribune Sunday Magazine, writing enterprise and investigative reporting, columns, personal essays, profiles, and photography.

I have been awarded a month-long Vashon Arts Residency on Vashon Island to work on the Turquoise Mountain script and graphic memoir.  I received the Journalist-in-Aging fellowship from the New America Foundation, and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation Fellowship to the Poynter Foundation. I have been awarded seven  Rockower Awards for Excellence in Journalism in the last seven years from the American Jewish Press Association, and annual awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, National Federation of Press Women, and New Mexico Press Women over the last ten years. 

Prior to moving West, I was a regular contributor to the Chicago Tribune and the ChicagoTribune Sunday Magazine, including five cover stories,  I established and wrote their Photography Arts column, and contributed regularly to their Travel and WomanNews sections.

I started out as  a photo stringer for Chicago Magazine and The Reader, and then soon expanded to Time, Forbes, Town and Country, In These Times, Stern and others.

Over a period of five years, beginning in 1979, I  worked with conceptual artist Michele Fitzsimmons and we produced the art performance/photography project, which became the internationally exhibited and best-selling book “The Chicago Exhibition,” Melrose/LA and Braus/Munich, 1985. 

As a photojournalist I went to El Salvador to cover the civil war for a European magazine, a seismic experience that has taken me a lifetime to process.

When I returned, I drove a taxi the night shift, my “photographic sabbatical”, and the photos I took received a  National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Photography and were included in a cover story I wrote, Night Moves, published by the Chicago Tribune Sunday Magazine. I taught photography at Columbia College as an adjunct professor. 

EDUCATION
In 2020, I graduated from Antioch University Santa Barbara  with a dual  M.F.A. in New Media and Screenwriting as a Riskin-Rintell Scholar. In 2002 I received a M.A. in English in the Creative Writing Program at the University of New Mexico with a full scholarship as a Governors Scholar. I have a B.F.A. from Rhode Island School of Design in Photography, where I studied photography with Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind and later with Gary Winograd, and a B.A. from Prescott College in Comparative Literature, where I first studied photography with surrealist Frederick Sommer and photographer Jay Dusard.

I received the Anne Hillerman Award for Unpublished Non-Fiction from the Albuquerque Museum Foundation in November, 2019 for “Linked With the Devil,” an excerpt from my political memoir about civil war in Latin America.  Also in 2019, I received a special Contributions to Jewish Journalism Award  from the Jewish Federation of New Mexico.

Since 2008 I have been a regular op-ed and religion columnist for The Gallup Independent daily newspaper, from 2010-2021 senior correspondent for The New Mexico Jewish Link, and recently contributed to Tikkun, Lilith, Hadassah Magazine and the Intermountain Jewish News. My columns also appear on the Times of Israel blog .

I also write as Albuquerque correspondent for The Navajo Times, where I received 1st Place, Reporting, from the Native American Journalist Association,  and 2nd Place, Public Safety, Arizona Press Club, for “Branded and Scarred.”  I  also write locally for The Paper and Corrales Comment in Albuquerque.

bibliographic details of awarded articles:

My Spiritual Perspective columns for the Gallup Independent newspaper have won 1st place three times, and a total of six times in the last seven years, from the Society of Professional Journalists Top of the Rockies contest.

As senior correspondent for the New Mexico Jewish Link for ten years, until it closed in 2022, my articles  won seven Rockower awards for Excellence in Jewish Journalism from the American Jewish Press Association in a variety of reporting categories:  Social Justice and Humanitarian Reporting, Honorable Mention, Magazine Division, 2022 for “A Conversation with a Front-Line Radiologist and Sephardic Ancestry Seeker Dr. Yvette Bailey”; Arts Criticism, HM 2021 for “Windshield Cracks, How the Light Gets In”;  Social Justice and Humanitarian Reporting, HM 2020 for “Montessori School Visits Auschwitz”;  Interfaith Relations Reporting, 2nd place 2019 for “The Pittsburg Shooting, Our Community Unites”; Personal Essay, 1st Place 2017 for “What Chanting a Prayer Just Might Do for You“; News Reporting, 1st Place and Photography, 1st Place, 2016 for coverage of the Students for Justice in Palestine attempt  to pass BDS legislation at the University of New Mexico, that was defeated by Hillel students.   

Other previous notable first-place awards include from  the Native American Journalist Association, 1st place, Reporting,  and Safety  Reporting (Public Service), Arizona Press Club,  for the Navajo Times for “Branded and Scarred,”  reporting about a disabled Navajo man branded with a swastika, the first hate-crime successfully prosecuted under Obama’s new hate-crime law.

Also, awards from the Society of Professional Journalists regional contest annually in addition to the columns since 2013, include, For the NM Link,  2022, 3rd place in Large Newspaper Division, for two articles: Religion feature, “Meeting Rabbi Celia Surget” and Arts feature “A Conversation with Maria Espinoza, author of Suburban Souls”; 1st place,  Religion Series 2018, and 1st place, Arts profiles 2019.  Education Reporting for the Gallup Independent,  “Healing from the Wounds of History, the Holocaust and the Navajos’ Long Walk,”  first-place, Radio Features for commentary for NPR/KUNM,  2013, ” MLK Jr. in a Corporate Age.”

Additionally,  numerous awards for journalism, essays, poems, photography, and photography with writing, from New Mexico Press Women (NMPW) and National Federation of Press Women (NFPW). Most recently, in 2023 and 2022, 1st Place Winner overall (NMPW) for Individual Awards, for articles for the Navajo Times, NM Jewish Link,  and Gallup Independent columns; For National Federation Press Women, in 2023, HM, “Speakers: Irony of Chaco Park” Navajo Times; 2021, 1st place,  for Photographer-Writer, “A Red-Tailed Hawk” in Another Chicago Magazine, and from NMPW, 2nd place overall for Individual entries, with 9 awards, 8 of which were for the NM Jewish Link, placing 2nd overall for Organizational Awards, and in 2020, similarly, 2nd place for Individual Awards, for 8 awards.

I am from Chicago, where,  following graduation from Rhode Island School of Design, I started out as a freelance photojournalist. Over time, I became an adjunct professor in Photography at Columbia College, and  was a regular contributor to the Chicago Tribune as both writer and photographer:  Sunday Chicago Tribune Magazine with 5 cover stories,  wrote the inaugural Photo Arts column for the Chicago Tribune Friday section, and regularly contributed to their Travel and WomenNews sections.
My  photo book “The Chicago Exhibition,” with Michele Fitzsimmons, Melrose/LA and Braus/Munich, achieved international recognition, with photo spreads in magazines Photo, France; Studio Photo, Japan;  and articles in American Photographer, Popular Photography, and Photo District News as well as in Chicago Magazine ( by Joann Trestrail).

As a photojournalist in Chicago I was a photo stringer for Time, Forbes, Town and Country, The Reader, Chicago Magazine, In These Times and others. As a professional location photographer, my corporate clients included  Northwestern University and University of Chicago, LandsEnd Magazine, and major banks and hospitals.

I completed a political memoir, Darkening of the Light, about my experiences as a photojournalist covering the civil war in El Salvador. An excerpt won the Anne Hillerman Award for unpublished prose in 2019 from the Albuquerque Museum.

Leaving Chicago, from 1992 to 1996 I was Director of Photography for publications of the Office of the Vice President for Research at the University of Arizona, Tucson. I received Volunteer of the Year, 1994,  from the Arts Genesis youth arts/gang prevention/education organization,  as co-Director, with Rosa Anchondo, for the Pasqua Yaqui Intergenerational Project, where children photographed and wrote about their grandparents, which ultimately was exhibited at the Center for Contemporary Photography, UA. 

I earned a dual MFA in New Media and Screenwriting from Antioch University Santa Barbara, 2020, with a Riskin Scholarship; a MA in Creative Writing Program from the University of New Mexico, 2002 with a Governors Scholar full tuition scholarship, where I also taught Creative Writing and Honors English;  a BFA, Photography, from Rhode Island School of Design; and a BA, Comparative Literature, Prescott College.

I taught Photography at Columbia College, Chicago, 1991-92, as an adjunct instructor before moving west in 1992. 

Bibliography details:
American Jewish Press Association Rockower Awards, the “Jewish Pulitzers” for Excellence in Reporting. Eight awards to date.

• 2024 AJPA Rockower Award, Award for Single Commentary

  “Coyote tosses the stars and why AI can’t help us” published by The Times of Israel. Judge’s Comment: While written from a Jewish perspective, this is really an essay about the fragility of spirituality and hope, and it could not be timelier.  for Websites

• 2022 AJPA Rockower Award, Social Justice and Humanitarian Reporting, HM, for “A Conversation with a Front-Line Radiologist and Sephardic Ancestry Seeker Dr. Yvette Bailey Spring 2021 (magazines)
• 2021 AJPA Rockower Award, HM, Excellence in Arts Criticism, “Windshield Cracks, How the Light Gets In. 2020”
• 2020 AJPA Rockower Award,  Social Justice and Humanitarian Reporting, HM, for “8th grade class trip to Auschwitz.”
•  2019 AJPA  Rockower,  2nd place, Interfaith Relations Reporting Ethics and Community Reporting, “Pittsburg Shooting, A Community Unites”
• 1st Place, 2017  36th Annual Simon Rockower Award for Excellence in Personal Essay, for the NM Jewish Link, for “What Chanting a Prayer Might Just Do for You.”
• 1st Place, 2015 American Jewish Press Association First-place for Reporting and
• 2015 First-place for Photography,  for articles on Hillel’s fight with the BDS movement at the University of New Mexico

Fellowships and honors

• 2019 Anne Hillerman Award for Unpublished Non-Fiction, Bronze, Albuquerque Museum Foundation Celebration of Writers Program.

• 2018 New Mexico Jewish Federation Award for Contributions to Jewish Journalism.
• 2015-17 Journalist-in-Aging Fellow, New America Media Foundation/GSA

Society of Professional Journalists Top of the Rockies Awards

Spiritual Perspectives, Gallup Independent,  Columns/Personal 2024 3rd; 2023 3rd; 2021 1st; 2020 1st; 2019 3rd; 2017 2nd; 2016 1st; 2015 2nd

• 2024 mid-sized newsroom, Gallup Independent, 3rd Place.  Columns/Personal: “Coyote Tosses the Stars” “What’s the big deal?” “To find oneself through another”. 
• 2023 3 awards: mid-sized newsroom, Gallup Independent,  Columns/Personal 3rd Place.;  Small newsroom Legal Feature 3rd pl. Navajo Times, Education Feature 3rd Navajo Times 
• 2022 3 awards: 3rd Place in LARGE Newspaper Division, Art Features, “Maria Espinoza, Suburban Souls Author,” and Religion features, “Meeting Rabbi Celia Surget,” for NM Jewish Link. 
• 2021 1st Place Personal Columns for Gallup Independent 3 columns: “NDN Kars, windshield cracks, how the light gets in'” 10/31/20; “Tisha B’Av and John Lewis” 8/1/20; “Frozen II, A heroine’s journey.” 2/22/20.
• 2020 1st Place Personal Columns: Your One Wild and Precious Life 1/19/19; Upon Waking 4/13/19; Driving the Night Shift Christmas Eve 9/7/19.
• 2019 3rd Place Personal Columns
• 2018 1st Place Religion Reporting Series of four articles
  Muslims and Jews Unite; Refugees and Immigrants; Rev. Wm Barber,
  Civil Rights Leader; Rabbi Baz, Congregation B’nai Israel.
• 2017 – 1st Place  Arts and Entertainment Single Profile, for “Evelyn Rosenberg and her Explosive Art,” for the New Mexico Jewish Link, circ. <10,000 and 2nd Place 2017 Personal Columns  for Gallup Independent  3 columns: “The First Shall be Last: One for the Money,” “There Once Was a Woman Who was Apologetic,” and “Beneath the Surface.” (“First shall be last” and “Apologetic” also appeared in NM Jewish Link)
• 2016 1st Place Personal Columns  for columns as posted in Gallup Independent “Spiritual Perspectives” Religion column  2016 Award for 3 columns: “Serendipity and the Power of Daydreams,” “Who by Fire,” and “The Merkabah and the Exegesis of a License Plate.” (also appeared in New Mexico Jewish Link.)
• 2015 2 Awards First-place Education Reporting for “The Long Walk and the Holocaust,” and 2nd Place Personal Columns, including “An answer so simple, I couldn’t see it,” “Play catch with balls, not missiles,” and   “Alternative perceptions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,”  for Gallup Independent, 10,000-29,999 daily.
• 2013 First Place, Radio Features, “Martin Luther King Jr.s’ Message Important in Corporate Age” KUNM-NPR Albuquerque’s community powered public radio station.

New Mexico Press Women/National Federation Press Women

2023 National Federation Press Women: HM, Environ. Reporting,  “Irony of Chaco Park withdrawal” Navajo Times.

2023 New Mexico Press Women, 1st Place “Sweepstakes” Award of Excellence for Individual Achievement. , for most awarded articles overall, 7, including:  3 for Navajo Times, 1st, Env. “Irony of Chaco Park withdrawal”, 1st, Ag. New U.S. Settlement for Individual Farmers,” HM, “A Chance for Native Early Childhood Education,”  3 for Gallup Independent Columns: 1st, “Finding the voice of the tender heart,” 2nd, “Passover is the process of liberation,” 3rd, “Shallows and Shadows,” and HM for Corrales Comment, 3rd, Green/Environmental, “Cottonwood tree removal necessary.”

2022 New Mexico Press Women, 1st Place “Sweepstakes” Award of Excellence for Individual Achievement. , for most awarded articles overall, 7, for work published by the NM Jewish Link and the Gallup Independent in 2021. 

2021 National Federation Press Women, 1st Place, Photographer/Writer for “A Red-tailed Hawk,” published in Another Chicago Magazine.

2021 New Mexico Press Women:  Nine Awards, eight for the NM Jewish Link, 1 for Another Chicago Magazine.  2nd Place overall for Individual, and Organizational Awards of Excellence for work published 2020. 

2019 8 Awards  New Mexico Press Women Communications Contest for work published 2018, including 2nd place Award of Excellence for Individual Achievement. For New Mexico Jewish Link: articles: 1st Place, Religion, “Journey of a Torah Scroll” 3rd, Religion, “Pittsburgh Shooting Unites Community” 2nd, Personality Profile over 500 words, “Stanley Rosebud Rosen: This Tumult that Teaches Us” 2nd, News Photo, “Stanley Rosebud Rosen” 2nd, General Photo, “Red-tailed Hawk”. For Gallup Independent columns: 3rd Place, Editorial/Opinion published in a printed newspaper, for “Trust and Betrayal” 12/01/2018 and 3rd Place, Two -Columns/Personal, for “Soul Blues” 9/15/18 and “The Eighth Night” 8/18/18.

2018

• Second Place – 2 Speciality Articles – Social Issues:
  Muslims and Jews Unite; A Moral Revival, Rev. Barber
  
• Second Place – 2 Specialty articles – Religion
  A Jewish and Navajo Marriage; The Jewish Case for Refugees & Immigrants
• Third  Place– Personality Profile – more than 500 words: A Visit with Rabbi Evelyn Baz

2017 wining entries written for New Mexico Jewish Link with New America Media Journalist-in-Aging Fellowship:

• • First Place – Arts & Entertainment (previews) – for “Fractured Faiths, groundbreaking and controversial exhibit”  and “Evelyn Rosenberg and Her Explosive Art”
  • First Place – Health – “Albuquerque, is it a place where Jews can retire?”  and “Studies on Dementia, Q&A with Dr. Gary Rosenberg”
  • Second Place – Single Poem – “There Once Was a Woman Who Was Apologetic” Fall
  • Third Place – Religion – “Trump the Religious” and “Swastika Graffiti on UNM Campus: How headlines got it wrong and why it matters”
  • Honorable Mention – History – “After 523 Years, Spain offers citizenship to descendants of those who fled Inquisition” and “Internationally known anti-Israel Speaker at UNM: Richard Falk”

  National Federation of Press Women 

  • Third Place – Arts and Entertainment (previews) – for “Fractured Faiths, groundbreaking and controversial exhibit” and “Evelyn Rosenberg and Her Explosive Art”
  • Honorable Mention – Health – “Studies on Dementia, Q&A with Dr. Gary Rosenberg” and “Albuquerque, is it a place where Jews can retire?”
• 2016 2 New Mexico Press Women First place, single photo, White House, and first place Specialty articles: Religion  for NM Jewish Link 
• 2015 Eight New Mexico Press Women awards, including second-place, NMPW Communications Award of Excellence for Individual Achievement with cash award, and three first-place awards for Specialized Reporting: Religion, Photography/Reporting, and Essay in a Book.
• 2015 National Federation of Press Women, third-place, Essay in a Book, for “What Chanting a Prayer Just Might Do for You.” Essay excerpted from Music: Carrier of Intention in 49 Jewish Prayers, editors Kimberly Burnham and Elizabeth W. Goldstein, preface by Rabbi Shefa Gold, Creating Calm Publishing Group, 2014.
• 2012 1st Place, Reporting, Native American Journalist Association, and 2nd Place, Public Service Award, Arizona Press Club, for Navajo Times “Branded and Scarred.”