Grounded by North Mississippi and South Georgia roots, Angela N. Oliver is a proud native of #OldAtlanta, who grew up in the West End.

Her knack for storytelling, passion for celebrating cultures, and duty to expose injustice earned her a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism and Black Studies from Western Kentucky University, where she also became a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.

She was the first Black full-time reporter (and later features editor) at the Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer, 2011-2017, where she challenged erasure by centering Black folks in a range of coverage and editorials. There, she created "In the Margins," a series of in-depth stories about marginalized people and communities, yiedling coverage of local issues such as disproportionate school suspensions of Black K-12 students, the history of a once-thriving Black farming town lost largely to USDA discrimintion, and a sweeping look at judicial and societal responses to the crack versus opioid epidemics.  

Her beats included Arts & Entertainment, covering a lively community arts landscape; Religion & Values, covering the Diocese of Western Kentucky and beliefs from humanism to Islam to Southern Baptist; and Agriculture, in a thriving farm region with international reach. She was nominated for the Kentucky Farm Bureau's 2016 Ag Communicator of the Year award, and was also selected for the National Press Foundation's 2016 "Future of Food & Farming" Fellowship in St. Louis.

A member of the Society of Professional Journalists, she was named a Dori Maynard Diversity Leadership Fellow in 2017. With a heart for helping young people find and their voice, Angela also taught media writing at Kentucky Wesleyan College, 2014-2017, where she advised the Black Student Union through its reactivation. There, she also served in various leadership roles on the boards of the Owensboro Human Relations Commission, Ownebsoro Black Expo, H.L. Neblett Community Center, and the Owensboro-Daviess County Race & Child Welfare Committee.

Before coming to the ArtsXchange in February of 2022, Angela was the communications coordinator at Project South, where she grew into nonprofit communications and grassroots organizing — including working on the communications team for the Southern Movement Assembly; facilitating the Community Communications skills-building track at the 2019 Get Ready, Stay Ready Southern Leadership Summit & Organizing Internsive in Mobile, Alabama; as well as co-facilitating the Movement Journalism "Conversation Cafe" at the 2018 Allied Media Conference in Detroit.

Angela is also a poet and creative writer who daydreams about seeing her scripts come alive on the big screen.

Angela Oliver

media@artsxchange.org