Kathie Farnell, a native of Montgomery, Alabama, was born in 1952, the oldest child of two lawyers. She graduated cum laude from the University of Montevallo with a BA in English in 1973, and from University of Alabama School of Law in 1977. She served as an assistant attorney general for the state of Alabama, and in the early 1980s was Director of the University of Alabama Office of Energy and Environmental Law. In 1997, she retired from the practice of law to found Artemis Media Project, a nonprofit corporation located in Alabama which develops and produces quality programming in cooperation with state-of-the-art technical facilities. She received the Gabriel Award and the New York Festivals’ Gold and Bronze World medals for her work as originator and co-producer of the landmark
1998 Public Radio International documentary series Remembering Slavery, on which she collaborated with Smithsonian Productions.

Artemis public radio projects produced in collaboration with New York-based Murray Street Productions include W.C. Handy’s Blues, Swingtime: Black School Bands on the Rhythm Road and Heavenly Sight, all distributed nationally by PRI; as well as Honky Tonks, Hymns and the Blues, a series of modules on the roots of country music for National Public Radio’s Morning Edition. Kathie Farnell’s television work includes production and scriptwriting for Alabama Public Television. Her first memoir, Duck and Cover: A Nuclear Family was featured at the Alabama Book Festival and the Southern Festival of the Book and on C-SPAN’s BookTV.

She lives ten miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico with her husband, Jack Purser, and an assortment of cats.