Molly Montgomery, a freelance contributor to Searchlight, is joining our ranks as a full-time investigator, and we couldn’t be more excited about what she’ll bring to the organization. I’ve been working with young writers for more than 30 years; Molly’s talent, drive, and professionalism really stand out, making her a prized addition to a very strong group. Among the subjects she’ll cover: New Mexico land use, the environment, the unhoused, immigration and the state’s legal and political systems, with an emphasis on the roles women office-holders play. She’ll also let her wide-ranging curiosity take her down roads that, I’m sure, will lead to unexpected ideas that will enrich what we do.

Molly, who grew up in Santa Fe,  has deep roots in New Mexico — her family has lived in the state for more than a century. In  a brief bio she wrote last year for our newsletter, High Beam, she said: “I come from a line of politicians and lawyers. … We were white migrants who arrived here midway through the territorial period, a quarter century before the United States called the place a state.”

After graduating from high school in 2015, Molly headed east to attend Yale, where she studied moral philosophy and took a variety of writing workshops in poetry and literary nonfiction. “In these classes, I was trying to figure out how to write about New Mexico,” she recalls. She came home and took a job at the Rio Grande Sun, a vital small-town newspaper based in Española. She moved to New York and worked at a variety of editing jobs, but New Mexico stayed on her mind.

“I spent most of my time in New York thinking about home,” she says. “I’d bike to a grassland at the edge of Brooklyn, squint at the grasses and pretend I was looking at New Mexico. Then I’d cry and ride home. This is part of why I’ve felt such joy writing for Searchlight. Having a chance to learn as much as I can about New Mexico and to write about it is my dream job.”

Read Molly’s work in our newly published 2025 Searchlight Annual Magazine.