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Four time Emmy Award Winner.  Writer, Producer, Director.  Documentaries.  Branding campaigns.  Events.  Story consultation.

 

Shortly after enrolling at the world-renowned University of MIssouri Graduate School of Journalism, Garmon walked into an afternoon class.  After a late night of studying, she feared she would nod off in the small seminar.  The professor walked in and introduced a guest speaker:  Berton Roueche, the well-known medical mystery writer for The New Yorker.  Roueche was working on a draft of his next New Yorker piece, and he simply opened a notebook and read it.   Far from being sleepy, Garmon was on the edge of her seat, engrossed by the arc of the story.  She knew on the spot that no matter where her career took her, she would always want to be a storyteller.  To this day, many years later, she vividly remembers the article Roueche shared:  "Live and Let Live," which was published the next year.

 

Garmon wrote for Science News Magazine in Washington, D.C., after graduate school.   On the strength of her work there, she was awarded a prestigious fellowship for journalists at the  Massachusetts Institute of Technology.    Afterwards, eager to stay in the Boston area and broaden her story-telling skills, Garmon accepted a job at WGBH-TV, one of the flagship stations for the Public Broadcasting System.  She quickly started writing, producing, and directing documentaries for NOVA, the American Experience, and other PBS series.

 

Garmon's most widely known program is "Secret of the Wild Child," a haunting episode of NOVA that documents what happened when doctors discovered a 13-year-old girl who had been severely socially isolated from birth.  The child became the object of research studies, such as investigations into whether she had passed a critical period for learning language.  "This is an hour of poignance and tragedy, a 'Tarzan story played out for real," Variety reported:  "Linda Garmon's fine achievement is in simply and clearly telling the story of a lost life that never really had a chance to be lived.  Along the way, she raises some powerful questions.  Her strength is in letting her audience make its own conclusions."

 

Garmon won one of four Emmy Awards for "Secret of the Wild Child."  Among her numerous other awards, she has won a Gold Baton at the Dupont-Columbia Awards, a Robert F. Kennedy Award for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism, and Best Film in the Reportage Category at the Reel Lives Film Festival in Geneva, Switzerland, for her personal, 90-minute documentary "The Truth About Cancer," which chronicles her husband's death from mesothelioma.

 

After 15 years on staff at WGBH, Garmon formed her own production company, Carousel Films & Communications, where she tells stories across all media platforms.   She continues her award-winning documentary work.  But she also produces branding campaigns, marketing videos, web sites, social media projects, and events.   She has worked on projects for PTC Therapeutics, Genzyme, Boston Healthcare for the Homeless, and the Foundation for Excellence in Mental Health, among others.  Having been inspired by the phenomenal medical writing of Berton Roueche when she was in graduate school, Garmon has favored projects in the area of health care and biomedicine.  But she has also produced web sites for a nationally known law firm that fights for workers rights--and for "Scratch," the computer programming language for children.  She has even directed a social media campaign for a local pizza chain that supports living wages for its food workers.  Whether her project is for a PBS audience, pharmaceutical client, or a pizzeria, Garmon's skill is identifying and telling the right story.

 

Garmon lives with her family in Cambridge, MA., where she is founder and president of the Monthly Movie Club.

 

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