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Reframing Rural Podcast Team
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Megan Torgerson
Founder, Producer & Host
Megan is a farmer's daughter from Northeast Montana. In 2019 she developed Reframing Rural while an arts leadership MFA student at Seattle University. Since then, she has dedicated her creative writing, podcasting and fundraising skills to producing stories about the rural West and Heartland. Megan has also lent her knowledge of rural spaces and storytelling to community needs assessments, keynotes, lectures, workshops and educational courses for organizations including the Red Ants Pants Foundation, Montana Farmers Union, Montana State University Extension, the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Montana State University and ServeMontana, the Governor’s Office of Community Service.
Aaron Spieldenner
Audio Engineer & Composer
Aaron is a multi-disciplinary sound artist, with a focus on immersive, colorful soundtracks and sound design. His critical ear for technical design and keen understanding of the emotion of sound come together to create polished sonic worlds for the listener to get lost in. He earned his bachelor's in film scoring from Berklee College of Music. Podcasts, video games, film, commercials and live performance are all mediums wherein Aaron practices his craft.
Madeline Jorden
Associate Producer
Madeline began her career working on a cattle ranch in eastern Colorado, an experience that shaped her passion for telling stories about land, food, community and culture. Having left the prairie behind for the mountains of western Montana, she's now based in Missoula, where she received a master's degree in environmental journalism from the University of Montana. At Reframing Rural, she brings a love for amplifying rural voices and exploring how communities and landscapes shape one another.
Courtney Lowery Cowgill
Story Editor for Season 5
Courtney Lowery Cowgill writes, edits, and teaches from a small farm on the central Montana plains, in the same county where she grew up. Her literary work explores our bonds with landscapes and the bonds that are formed because of those landscapes. Her childhood as a farm kid and then later, her time as a farmer herself, informs much of her work. In addition to her work as a writer and freelance editor, Cowgill also teaches Nonfiction at Johns Hopkins University. She taught journalism at the University of Montana School of Journalism for more than a decade. She holds a BA in Journalism from the University of Montana and an MA in Writing from Johns Hopkins University. She and her bread-baker husband, Jacob, also a product of central Montana, are raising two great rural kids.
Sean Dwyer
Audio Engineer & Composer
Sean Dwyer is a sound and music producer specializing in composition and mixing for film, media and beyond. With a degree in film scoring from Berklee College of Music, he’s shaped soundscapes for a wide range of story-driven projects, blending technical precision with a feel for emotion and impact.
Mary Auld
Story Editor for Seasons 3 & 4
Mary grew up in the boreal forest of interior Alaska and the hay fields of upstate New York. Today, she's an audio journalist and editor with a background in public radio and podcasting. She is also the director of the Montana Media Lab. In that role she coordinates teen audio journalism workshops in the state’s rural and Indigenous communities and produces narrative podcasts. Mary has a master's degree in environmental journalism from the University of Montana. Her favorite stories use sound to convey relationships between people and landscapes. Mary's first pets were worms in the compost bin.
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