Joan Garrett McClane has been a staff writer for the Times Free Press since August 2007. Before becoming the newspaper's project editor, she covered business, higher education and the court system. But in recent years she has mostly focused on reporting investigative and narrative pieces on everything from gang culture to suicide to the child welfare system. And her work to highlight the issues facing those on the fringes of society has earned the paper national recognition. This year the Associated Press named McClane "Journalist of the Year" for the state of Tennessee, and in 2014 she was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for a series she spearheaded on Chattanooga's unsolved murder rate and the no snitch culture of the inner city. She has received the national Casey Medal for writing about children and families and the national Sigma Delta Chi award from the Society of Professional Journalists for her feature writing. She has also been a finalist for the Livingston Award for young journalists, the Dart Award for coverage of trauma and the American Society of Newspaper Editors' Award for Distinguished Writing on Diversity. When she isn't chasing stories, she likes hosting friends and family at her home in Red bank and curling up on the couch for Netflix marathons with her husband, Matt, and 4-year-old rescue mutt named Gidget. Contact Joan at 423-757-6601 or jmcclane@timesfreepress.com.