FEATURE
12
TOWER
|
Winter 2013
MIRIAM AMIE ’76 isn’t kidding; she’s stating a fact.
When the Iraqi dictator’s forces overran Kuwait in 1990,
it thrust Amie, then a part-time reporter for the Associated
Press (AP), into the front line.
It would put her in harm’s way, in bunkers wondering
where the next Iraqi Scud missile would strike, and whether
it bore deadly gas. Once, she needed to scramble for cover
by a burning oil well in southern Iraq.
Eventually, her skills would land her a challenging and
dangerous job in Afghanistan’s troubled Kandahar province,
where the Taliban often hold sway and periodic shelling
was the norm. While there, she worked to improve the lives
of the local people, especially the women.
“I never envisioned being a journalist in a conflict zone,”
“Saddam Hussein really
changed my life.”
In theLineof
F i r
said Amie, who has specialized in covering conflict and
post-conflict scenarios.
It’s not a trajectory one would predict for an art educa-
tion major, but Amie, a native of Kingston, Pa., credits her
KU training with preparing her for this career.
“Kutztown prepared me to think, taught me how to
observe as an artist,” she said.
Those observational skills, she noted, are essential to a
reporter’s craft.
“In some art classes you had to observe for 20 minutes
before putting pencil to paper. That laid the groundwork for
much of the work that I did as a journalist. When you com-
pose a news story you have to talk to various sources. It’s
like doing a three-dimensional piece of work, four-dimen-
sional if through time.”
Amie explained that, regardless of the medium, artists
have to be conscious of how they perceive, the angles they
take, their points of focus.
The arc of her career transition started in New York,
For security reasons
no identifiable photos
of Miriam Amie
could be published.
BY:
F
élix
A
lFonso
P
eñA
