Kassie Bracken, a senior video journalist for The New York Times, where she reports, produces, shoots and edits both feature stories and documentaries, is this year’s Bard of the Fair.

Her visual work has been recognized with the National Press Photographers Association’s Best of Photo Journalism and Pictures of the Year International awards, the Katherine Schneider Award for Excellence in Reporting on Disability, and by The Journalism Center on Children and Families and The New York Association of Black Journalists.

She has received fellowships from the International Women’s Media Foundation, the Peter Jennings Project, and the Radio, Television, Digital News Foundation.

She is an adjunct professor at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. She earned her bachelor’s degree in English literature from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., and her master’s degree in human rights studies from Columbia University.
Kassie went to grammar school at St. Mary’s in Roslyn, L.I., and high school at Sacred Heart Academy in Hempstead.

In the eighth grade, she won the Daughters of the American Revolution essay contest for an essay on Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence.

She traces her Irish roots to Roscommon, Fermanagh and Tipperary.