Alice Kira Mannette is an award winning Journalist. She loves to both listen to and tell stories. Being a reporter and editor for decades, she continues to interview others and share their tales of love, hope, and disaster. With her short plays and her book, Mannette brings fictional characters to life.
Although Mannette grew up in New York City and Florida, she has lived in eight states and Northern Italy. During her early 20s, she spent two months backpacking across Europe. She has been back many times since then and has also traveled throughout the Americas, always amazed at each country’s rich culture. Understanding other cultures and visiting other countries is important to her. In addition to travel, Mannette is a lover of tea and classical music.
Mannette holds a master’s degree in writing from Hamline University, which included coursework in Soviet Studies at CUNY in NYC, and a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Florida. She is currently an editor for USA Today Co.
Several of her short plays have been performed, including “Marry Me or Else,” “Mein Freund,” and “Boudica.” She was also the cofounder of the Playwrights’ Roundtable in Orlando, Florida. Her interests are varied, but history, spirituality, and human injustice are always at the forefront of her mind.
She is an award-winning American journalist. In addition to multiple awards in news and photography from both the Virginia and Kansas Press associations, Mannette was honored by the NAAJ and was named Kansas Agriculture Leader of the Year. One of her favorite journalistic series was called “Roads to the Valley,” a multi-week examination of almost a dozen families who immigrated to the Shenandoah Valley from several continents. She also spent several years reporting on the plight and ingenuity of farmers in the great plains. Along with her years at USA Today Co., Mannette has written for American Business Journals, Public Radio, and Reuters.
She served on the Board of the Indochinese Center in Wichita, Kansas for eight years and has taught English, journalism, or speech at Newman University; St. Andrews University in North Carolina; University of North Carolina-Pembroke; Wichita State University Tech; and film studies at the Ezra Pound Center for Literature at Brunnenburg Castle in Tirolo, Italy.
Along with managing clothing stores, crisis counseling, teaching, and reporting, Mannette has also worked at her share of dives and restaurants. Each job has afforded her a deeper understanding of humanity and a further desire to help spread the word on societal issues. She and her husband have raised three sons, moving them from state to state and overseas.
Alice Kira Mannette 