June Cross
June Cross, a native New Yorker, is a writer and documentary producer interested in the intersection of poverty, race and politics in the United States. She is a professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, where she founded a program in journalistic documentary. Her last film, Wilhemina’s War, about a South Carolina grandmother fighting for access to health care for her family, premiered at DOCNYC in 2015 and aired on PBS’ Independent Lens in February 2016. It was nominated for a national Emmy, her sixth nomination.
She is best known for an Emmy-winning documentary about her own family, Secret Daughter, which aired on FRONTLINE in 1996. She was an executive producer of the six-hour PBS series This Far by Faith. Cross also produced The Old Man and the Storm, which aired on FRONTLINE in 2009. She has worked for CBS News and PBS NewsHour. She has been exploring experimental documentary and performance pieces that use documentary elements at the MIT Open Documentary Lab. She lives in New York City's Washington Heights, with the jazz drummer Mike Clark.