Lonnie Lee Hood is a queer journalist based in Tennessee. They began covering all things government, labor, queer, and more in 2013 as a freelancer. In 2020, they went full time, pivoting to cover these issues in Appalachia. In 2022, they came out and changed their name and pronouns — you can read more about that in their Huffington Post essay about being nonbinary.

Since then, Lonnie has landed bylines in the New York Times, Washington Post, Teen Vogue, Smithsonian Magazine, Tennessee Lookout, Futurism, and more.

Lonnie has been a featured guest on podcasts like “It’s All Journalism,” and successfully organized for rent relief for tenants in Nashville following the deadly 2020 tornado. They are a featured panelist at the 2023 NLGJA conference and have presented their work to students in high schools across the US as well at Sewanee University. They also started Bitchin’ Pitchin', a project that taught hundreds of writers how to freelance — building a newsletter list of more than 3K in as many months, and teaching workshops to groups like the IWWFJU.

Read their work on the portfolio page, or reach out about work on the contact page.