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Deirdre Fleming Stires joined the Â鶹´«Ã½communications team as a communications specialist  in July 2024 after working as the senior writer at Bates College, where she helped craft the important storytelling around the school’s first Black president.

Before coming to work in academia, Deirdre spent 22 years reporting on the outdoors for the Portland Press Herald, where she won state and national awards for her investigative stories and off-beat narratives about Maine’s rugged landscape and outdoor people. 

Deirdre earned an M.A. in print journalism from the University of Missouri School of Journalism and a B.A. in English from Georgetown University. 

In her free time, Deirdre enjoys wilderness camping, fly fishing, and hiking in the Maine woods with her husband and their rescue dog. Deirdre also is writing one of the nation’s few hiking guides on universal-access and ADA trails.