Elaine McMillion Sheldon

February 27, 2020
“Documenting Appalachia: Recovery, Resilience, Renewal”

Elaine McMillion Sheldon is an Academy Award-nominated and Emmy and Peabody Award-winning documentary filmmaker and non-fiction storyteller based in Appalachia. She is the director of two Netflix Original Documentaries—Heroin(e) and Recovery Boys—that explore America's opioid crisis. Heroin(e) was nominated for a 2018 Academy Award and won the 2018 Emmy Award for Outstanding Short Documentary.

In 2013, she released Hollow, an interactive documentary that examines the future of rural America through the eyes and voices of West Virginians. Hollow received a Peabody, Emmy nomination and 3rd Prize in the World Press Photo Multimedia Awards.

Sheldon has appeared on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, Anthony Bourdain's CNN Show Parts Unknown and Meet The Press with Chuck Todd. She was recently named a 2018 USA Fellow by United States Artists, one of the "25 New Faces of Independent Film" by Filmmaker Magazine and one of "50 People Changing The South" by Southern Living Magazine. In 2016, Chicken & Egg Pictures awarded her with the inaugural "Breakthrough Filmmaker" award.

She's a founding member of All Y'all Southern Documentary Collective. She has been commissioned by Netflix, Frontline PBS, The Center for Investigative Reporting, The New York Times Op-Docs, TEDWomen, Field of Vision, and The Bitter Southerner.

She lives in Charleston, West Virginia with her husband and filmmaker, Curren Sheldon.

Sponsored by the Department of Communication, the Appalachian Studies Program, the Department of Anthropology, Sociology and Social Work and the Honors Program

Sources:
https://www.elainemcmillionsheldon.com/about
https://www.unitedstatesartists.org/fellow/elaine-mcmillion-sheldon/

Published on February 27, 2020