Orion Staff

H. Emerson Blake
Executive Director/Editor-in-Chief
Chip has been with Orion since 1992. He served as the magazine’s Managing Editor from 1993 until 2003, when he left to become Editor-in-Chief of Milkweed Editions, a nonprofit book publisher. In 2005 he returned to Orion to serve as Editor-in-Chief. He has been the editor of hundreds of magazine articles and many books of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Work he has edited has been nominated for or won many awards, including the Pushcart Prize, the PEN Literary Award, the John Oakes Award in Environmental Journalism, the Minnesota Book Award, the Oregon Book Award, and The New York Times Notable Book of the Year. He has served as a judge for several literary awards, and has been a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in Great Barrington with his wife Lisa and son Jay.

Madeline Cantwell
Managing Director, Communications
Before coming to Orion, Madeline worked in development for public radio and for several small environmental nonprofits in midcoast Maine. She has a background in sustainable development and food security, and is an active volunteer with the Common Ground Country Fair and with Voices from Inside, a western Massachusetts nonprofit that coordinates writing workshops for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women.  She started at Orion as Director of Development in 2007 and became Managing Director, Communications, in 2010.  Madeline has served on a number of nonprofit boards, is a very avid gardener, and has been reading Orion magazine since her teens.

Hal Clifford
Executive Editor
Hal has worked as a journalist and writer since 1984, and is the author of numerous articles and three books. For details please see the Hal Clifford website. He was a finalist for the 2002 Society of Environmental Journalists Awards for Reporting and the 2001 John B. Oakes Award for Distinguished Environmental Journalism, and a top-three finalist for the 2001 Scripps Howard National Journalism Award for Environmental Reporting. He is a pilot, flyfisherman, foodie, a student of zymurgy, and shares a big Victorian house in the Berkshires with his wife and two children.

Hannah Fries
Assistant Editor
Hannah feels most at home in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, where she grew up. She graduated from Dartmouth College with a B.A. in English and a minor in music. She worked at The Frost Place museum and arts center at the homestead of Robert Frost in Franconia, NH, and in marketing and sales at the University Press of New England before coming to Orion as an intern in 2005. Hannah’s poems have appeared in several literary journals. Hannah recently received her MFA in poetry from the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers.

M.G.H. Gilliam
President & Publisher
With an early background in music and opera production, Marion Gilliam went on to earn a law degree at the Sorbonne in Paris. He worked for Schroeder’s Bank in London and New York before founding Givens Hall Capital Management, an investment company. He is the founder of Orion.

Jamie Goldenberg
Design Associate
Jamie received a B.A. in photography from Bard College at Simon’s Rock.  Since college she has worked for Project Native (a non-profit native plant organization in the Berkshires), The Aperture Foundation, and as a freelance photographer both locally and internationally.  Jamie began working for Orion as the Associate Picture Editor in 2008. Jamie continues to photograph and still gets very excited about native plants.

Kristen Hewitt
Editorial Intern
After graduating from Bates College in 2009 where Kristen studied creative writing and Japanese, she went on to study narrative journalism at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies in Portland, Maine. In addition to writing freelance articles for the Farmers’ Almanac, New York Art Beat, and Americans for Informed Democracy, she has worked as an editorial assistant for the magazine, ecopoetics.

Erik Hoffner
Coordinator, Orion Grassroots Network
In addition to coordinating the Orion Grassroots Network, Erik is a regular contributor to Orion magazine and Grist. He also serves on the boards of Co-op Power and Northeast Biodiesel, two community-owned renewable energy development organizations. Erik’s work as a photographer also appears in Orion and The Sun, and he is an exhibiting member of the Vermont Center for Photography in Brattleboro, VT. To see more of his personal work, visit http://www.erikhoffner.com.

Jason Houston
Picture Editor
In addition to nearly a decade at Orion, Jason Houston has continued his 20-year career as an independent documentary photographer, traveling to a dozen countries and across the U.S. for editorial outlets and non-profit organizations on projects addressing social and environmental issues. Recent projects include the future of our food system, grassroots conservation in the developing tropics, and the cultural landscape of the middleclass American family. His images have been used in print, online, and broadcast media and by clients around the world and have been exhibited by galleries and museums in New York, New England, Florida, and California. Jason joined Orion in 2000 following a brief break from freelance to run the marketing for a high-end bicycle component manufacturer on the west coast and began working directly with the magazine in 2002. To see more of his personal work, visit http://www.jasonhouston.com.

Chris Nye
Development Officer
A professor and then college administrator for many years, Chris has been active in instituting programs that promote college-to-community partnerships and place-based education. Chris holds a Ph.D. in American Studies, is active in local conservation efforts, builds stone walls, and writes poetry.

Jennifer Sahn
Editor
Jennifer has been on the magazine’s editorial staff for seventeen years. Articles she has edited have won the John Burroughs Essay Award, the Pushcart Prize, and have been reprinted in the Best American Science and Nature Writing and Best Creative Nonfiction. Her writing has been published in a variety of print venues and she has served as the editor for several book projects. Jennifer is a board member of BerkShares Inc., a local currency project, and sits on the advisory board of the University Press of Kentucky’s Culture of the Land series. She lives in South Egremont, Massachussetts, with her husband, Nick Thielker, and their son Henry.

Scott Walker
Director of Digital Media
After a career in book publishing at Graywolf Press, where his work won an American Book Award, Scott worked as an editorial director at Utne Reader. He then joined with several early internet companies in senior marketing and business development positions. He’s worked as an organizational development, strategic planning, and marketing consultant, and founded several businesses. Currently he lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts, with his wife and two children; his older son attends college in California. He serves on the board of directors of Greylock A Better Chance and the Williamstown Film Festival.

Orion is also made possible with the assistance of:
Circulation: John Brink, Greylock Media
Design & Production: Impress, Inc.
Studio Director: Hans Teensma
Design Director: Pam Glaven