The board of directors of Citizens for a Better Granby (CBG) is pleased to announce the hiring of Josh Anderson as the new managing editor of the Drummer. He began his duties on April 1, and he succeeds Heather Lockwood who will continue as a Drummer volunteer.
Anderson is a writer from rural North Dakota with extensive editorial experience and a passion for local storytelling. In 2019, he was hired as an assistant professor of American literature at the University of Saint Joseph, where he developed local media classes that resulted in the production of the documentary film Conte Conversations: Stories from the Silvio O. Conte National Fish and Wildlife Refuge, as well as a short documentary highlighting the Fresh Access food donation program at historic Holcomb Farm.
In 2021, he moved to West Granby, where he quickly cultivated a deep love for the farms, wildlife and people of the area. Anderson was on the winning Gran-Bee team in 2022, and he has been an active volunteer on the Holcomb Tree Trail. He is also an avid hiker and birder along the trails of the McLean Game Refuge and Granby Land Trust. He recently joined the farm crew at Holcomb Farm, where he has enjoyed learning about the local soils and local stories from farmer Joe O’Grady and the crew while he works on his first book, Soil Horizons, under contract with Plainspoken Books.
As a writer from the Great Plains, Anderson never expected to call New England home. He was raised on his grandmother’s Dust Bowl stories from her childhood in Oklahoma and his grandfather’s stories from his life on the North Dakota prairie.
But soon after moving to Granby, Anderson made a fascinating discovery: his ancestors originally settled right here in Granby—his grandmother is a descendent of the Holcomb and Hayes families.
“I had no idea about my ancestral connection to Granby until after I moved here,” Anderson said. “But I’ve come to expect remarkable stories from the people of Granby. Everyone I’ve met here has at least one great story, and usually a lot more than one.”
As the editor of the Drummer, Anderson looks forward to sharing his passion for local storytelling and local news with readers. If you have a story you’d like to write for the Drummer, or if you want to learn about other ways you can contribute as a volunteer, Anderson encourages you to reach out at editor@granbydrummer.org