The most popular and longest-running sustainable-lifestyle magazine, MOTHER EARTH NEWS provides wide-ranging, expert editorial coverage of organic foods, country living, green transportation, renewable energy, natural health, and green building. Lively, insightful, and on the cutting edge, MOTHER EARTH NEWS is the definitive read for the growing number of Americans who choose wisely and live well. Watch the video below from our friends at Sunflower Journeys for more on our history and parent company, Ogden Publications.
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Meet the staff of MOTHER EARTH NEWS:
Marissa Ames, Editorial Director
Marissa Ames began her editorial career in 2013 as a freelance writer for Backyard Poultry magazine. Since then, she has taken on roles editing multiple livestock and homesteading magazines before moving into the position of Editorial Director for Ogden Publications. Her “career” as a homesteader began long before that. At age 10, her mother quit her day job and raised 90 percent of the family’s food in order to save costs, while Marissa spent evenings and summer vacations working in the garden and caring for small livestock. Those skills became lifelong habits as she grew vegetables, raised meat and eggs, and made her family’s food to avoid high prices at the grocery store.
Marissa and her husband travel to Zambia to teach sustainable farming to rural villages and schools, where they have partnered with villages to trial saffron as a potential cash crop that doesn’t compete with local farmers. Currently, she is working on sustainable methods by which Zambian farmers can battle devastating armyworm infestations without purchasing cost-prohibitive pesticides. She volunteers on the board of a local nonprofit that protects food sovereignty and sustainability in rural communities, and she teaches homesteading classes for her local chapter of the National Grange organization. Marissa works to save a critically endangered American breed by keeping rare San Clemente Island goats. Her small homestead has a large vegetable garden where she studies and develops drought-tolerant crops, and makes her own cheese, bacon, soap, bread, and much more. She spends her free time eating lunch.
Amanda Sorell, Managing Editor
Amanda is the senior copy editor for Ogden Publications. At work, she values clarity and connection over upholding rigid grammatical standards. She lives in Seattle with a lively collection of houseplants and cats. She enjoys brewing herbal potions, cooking, learning, making DIY beauty products, and reading and writing about health, literature, and sustainability.
Jessica Mitchell, Associate Editor
Jessica joined the editorial staff in 2017, and loves working for impactful magazines. She moved from Pennsylvania, her lifelong home, to Kansas, and quickly fell in love with the small towns and open skies — though she does miss the Pennsylvania mountains. Outside of editing, Jessica enjoys reading and writing, baking, watching animated movies, wandering the Kansas trails, small-space gardening, and brewing a delicious tea or coffee.
Oscar H. Will III, Editor at Large
Hank Will (Oscar H. Will III) is a business leader, academic, and agricultural practitioner devoted to conservation and small scale, sustainable agriculture. He’s currently the editorial director at Ogden Publications in Topeka, Kansas, publishers of titles such as Grit, Capper’s Farmer, Mother Earth News, Farm Collector, and many other print and digital properties. Hank’s small-scale, high-cash-flow farming experience spans more than four decades, with plant and animal crops as varied as native perennials and heirloom laying chickens. His current project, Prairie Turnip Farm in rural Osage County, Kansas, is home to direct-market Highland beef, landrace lamb, soap, feral bee, hay, and metal-working businesses. Hank says that none of that would happen without immense help from his wife, Joanna, and her children Scott and Genevieve. Hank has also authored or co-authored 9 books and hundreds of articles, and enjoys maintaining open-pollinated corn varieties his great-grandfather developed in Bismarck, Dakota Territory, under the Oscar H. Will & Co. brand.
Rebecca Martin, Tech Editor for Rural Lifestyles
Rebecca grew up on a farm in Kansas, where she developed a lifelong love of gardening, food preservation, cooking, and DIY. She holds a master’s degree in American Studies, and worked for history museums for many years before coming to Ogden Publications — first with Mother Earth News, and later Grit and Capper’s Farmer. She and her husband like to push the envelope when it comes to front-yard gardening. You can follow her on Instagram, where she posts close-ups from her garden and, occasionally, photos of beautiful storm clouds.
Ingrid Butler, Associate Editor
Ingrid Butler has a BA in English from the University of California, Davis, and an MPhil in Children’s Literature from the University of Cambridge, UK. She enjoys gardening, pickling vegetables, fiber arts, and reading. She is passionate about trap-neuter-return for humanely dealing with feral cats, and loves to grow pollinator plants for the local bees.
Christine Stoner, Associate Editor
A native Kansan, Christine graduated from Washburn University with a bachelor’s degree in mass media focusing on writing and publishing with a minor in art. Her stint as a mechanic working on aircraft fuel systems in the Air Force fueled her fascination with anything motorized. She joined Ogden Publications in February of 2020 and specifically works on the collectible titles Gas Engine Magazine, Motorcycle Classics and Farm Collector, while also assisting with other publications. In her free time, she can be found creating art, gardening and preserving, hiking and kayaking, garage tinkering, practicing ukulele, taking on DIY home repairs with her husband, or bowling with her three children. She also has dogs, a villainous cat, and a coop full of sassy chickens that keep her days interesting.
Karmin Garrison, Associate Editor
An avid gamer, word nerd, herbalist, and DIYer, Karmin lives on a one-acre wannabe homestead in East Texas in a perpetual state of almost having goats. When not magicking up words or chasing after kids, she can be found wandering the woods, building something new, fishing, beading and sewing, trying to convince her plants to grow, or with her nose in a book. Sometimes she sleeps.
Ilene Reid, Editorial Assistant
Ilene was born and raised in Northeast Kansas, and loves small-town county living. Over the years, she’s had a hand in raising hogs, cattle, and chickens on a small scale. Her family has always had a few horses, and of course, a good dog and a few cats. She misses those days now, but working for Grit, Capper’s Farmer, and other rural titles fills her yearning for that simple country lifestyle.
Connect With Us!
- Subscribe to our Newsletters.
- Join our Editorial Advisory Group.
- Write us: 1503 SW 42nd Street, Topeka, KS 66609
- Contact us: 800-234-3368; Fax: 785-274-4305
- Email us!
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Want to contribute to MOTHER EARTH NEWS? Check out our submissions guidelines to get started.
MOTHER EARTH NEWS is published by Ogden Publications, Inc., in Topeka, Kansas. Ogden Publications, Inc. is the leading information resource serving the sustainable living, rural lifestyle, farm memorabilia and classic motorcycle communities. Learn more about Employment Opportunities, our Diversity Commitment and our Green Initiatives.
