Lillian Avedian covers education for the Nashville Banner. She is a former assistant editor and staff writer at the Armenian Weekly, where she reported on international politics, women’s rights, and diasporic identity. Her writing and reporting on the Middle East, North Africa, Russia, and the Caucasus has been published in Democracy in Exile, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Hetq, and Girls on Key Press, among other outlets. She has traveled to Morocco to report on the rise of women DJs and LGBTQ rights and to Armenia to cover the regional conflict and displacement crisis. Avedian holds master’s degrees in journalism and Near Eastern studies from New York University and bachelor’s degrees in peace and conflict studies and Slavic studies from the University of California, Berkeley. She is also a published poet with a deep love for Armenian feminist poetry.
Beat: Accountability reporting on the state of K-12 education in Nashville
Tennessee has become ground zero for the fight about the future of public education. Often, that fight – about vouchers, charter schools and funding – is political and divorced from educational outcomes and the experiences of students and teachers. That’s where the Banner’s education reporter comes in. This reporter digs into K-12 education in Metro Nashville Public Schools, private schools in the county and state policy to help readers understand and make choices about their children’s education.