The Sequim Gazette welcomes to its news staff Amanda Winters, reporter.

Winters says she spent most of her childhood exploring the fields and forests of what was once the Winters’ dairy farm up Deer Park Road east of Port Angeles. It wasn’t uncommon to find her near the pond writing in a notebook or catching frogs.

She was home schooled until she began attending Peninsula College, from which she graduated in 2006, and transferred to Western Washington University, where she received a bachelor’s degree in journalism, minoring in humanities and religious studies.

After college, she moved to Redding, Calif., where she worked as a multimedia journalist for the Redding Record-Searchlight, a medium-sized daily.

Winters says a summer of intense Northern California heat and a winter without a single snowflake were enough. She joined the Gazette on May 17, just in time for a beautiful Northwest summer.

She is the daughter of Ken and Susie Winters, of Port Angeles, and the granddaughter of Art and Joan Ritchie, of Sequim, and Harold and Velma Winters, of Port Angeles.