Ann Hedreen is a writer, filmmaker and teacher. She is a 2022 fellow in the Journalists in Aging Fellows Program of the Gerontological Society of America, and speaks and writes often about creative aging and the power of telling our life stories. Her memoir, Her Beautiful Brain, won a 2016 Next Generation Indie book award. Her blog, The Restless Nest, won an honorable mention from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. Ann has also won many Emmys and other filmmaking honors. Her writing has appeared in About Place Journal, 3rd Act Magazine, the Seattle Times, Seattle Met Magazine, and other publications, and on KBCS and KUOW radio, KIRO TV (CBS), and KCTS TV (PBS).

Ann earned her M.F.A. in creative writing at Goddard College and her B.A. at Wellesley College. She spent a year as a visiting student at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, is an alumna of the Hedgebrook Center for Women Writers, and volunteers for the Refugee Women’s Alliance as an ESL tutor. Ann teaches memoir writing at Seattle Central College, Hugo House, and elsewhere. In 2000, she and her husband Rustin Thompson founded White Noise Productions. Working exclusively as a two-person team, they’ve made more than 200 short documentary-style films for non-profit organizations and six feature-length documentaries. Ann and Rustin have two adult children and live in Seattle.