Megan Braden-Perry is a published author, award-winning freelance journalist, public speaker, photographer and multigenerational New Orleans native. Her books include Crescent City Snow: The Ultimate Guide to New Orleans Snowball Stands (UL Press, 2017) and Allen the Alligator Counts Through New Orleans: A New Orleans Kids’ Counting Book (2014).

Previously she was a news reporter and feature writer for NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune and for Gambit Weekly. She started at Gambit as an intern, and started a weekly greater New Orleans public transit travelogue, “Public Transit Tuesdays,” for which she won a 2013 Press Club of New Orleans Excellence in Journalism award. She won another for her work in the fashion and beauty pullout, CUE.

Her byline has appeared in Parents Magazine, Today, ApartmentTherapy, Essence, NY Daily News, Thrillist, Jezebel, The New Orleans Advocate, Very Local New Orleans, OffBeat, and Where Traveler. She’s covered everything, including New Orleans culture, food, crime, education, parenting, religion, Black culture, Creole culture, travel and politics.

In 2019, she was awarded the Jack Jones Literary Arts retreat Roxane Gay fellowship in prose, for her upcoming novel Greener Grass, Different Drummer. She’s on the board of 826 New Orleans and is a very proud product of Orleans Parish Public Schools (McDonogh 39, Lusher, Ben Franklin and McDonogh 35) and of HBCUs (Dillard University and Southern University). She’s also a graduate of Urban League of Louisiana’s ULEAD, Urban Leaders for Equity and Diversity, and she’s taught elementary through high school at New Orleans charter schools.

When she’s not writing, she’s hanging out with her son Franklin. Her best friend Jenny says she’ll “talk to the Devil for a sandwich,” and that is the most accurate biographical detail to date.