Victoria Bouloubasis is a freelance journalist, food writer and filmmaker. Her work aims to dispel myths about the Global South—its people and places—against the backdrop of complex social, political and personal histories. She often tells stories at the intersection of food, labor and im/migration. Her solo and collaborative work has won several awards, including a Murrow Award, the POY, the Premio Gabo and several Webbys; it has also been nominated for two Emmys and a James Beard Award. A working journalist since 2008, Victoria has reported from the rural U.S. South and Midwest, Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Costa Rica and Greece. She is based in Durham, N.C.

LONGER BIO:

Victoria has directed and produced several award-winning films. In 2023, “Rising Up in the Heartland” (Univision) won 1st place in the Documentary Journalism category at the Picture of the Year International (POYi) contest and was nominated for an Emmy. In 2024, “Forget Me Not” (Univision), a film she produced and directed about the rising tide of dementia-related illness in the Texas borderlands, was nominated for an Emmy. “Heroes of the Pandemic,” a Univision/Enlace Latino NC film she co-directed and co-produced won a 2021 Murrow Award and two 2021 Webby Awards for Longform News Documentary and People’s Voice. “Niñas,” a film she co-directed and produced with Agencia Ocote in Guatemala was part of a comprehensive transmedia project “No Fue El Fuego” that won the 2022 Premio Gabo (often touted as the Pulitzer of Latin America). Victoria was selected as a 2024 fellow of the New Orleans Film Society Southern Producers Lab. Victoria is currently co-directing The Last Partera, a documentary film about a 99-year-old midwife in rural Costa Rica.

In 2021, Victoria covered the intersection of environmental issues and economic mobility in Latinx, immigrant, and refugee communities in North Carolina for Southerly and Enlace Latino NC through a grant from the Solutions Journalism Network. In 2020 she worked as an investigative reporter with Enlace Latino NC. Her bilingual series “Ignored and Forgotten” / “Ignorados y Olvidados” examined what happens to rural Latinos before, during and after natural disasters. It won the 2021 LION Award for Investigative Report of the Year. The work was funded by the Local News Lab via the Democracy Fund.

Victoria is a 2018 James Beard Award finalist for local impact journalism. She won the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (AAN) first place award for immigration coverage in both 2019 and 2018. She was a 2017 International Women's Media Foundation (IWMF) Adelante Fellow to El Salvador and Guatemala and 2018 IWMF Grantee to Guatemala.

Victoria is the former food editor at INDY Week, the N.C. Triangle’s alt-weekly. Her writing and films have appeared in NPR, PBS, The Guardian, The American Prospect, Public Radio International, Bon Appetit, Travel + Leisure, The Local Palate, Whetstone Magazine, Guernica, Modern Farmer, Jezebel, News & Observer, Our State and INDY Week, where she was a chief contributor for 10 years. She was a co-producer for the PBS docuseries “Somewhere South” (2020), featuring chef Vivian Howard and directed by Cynthia Hill.

In 2017, Southern Living included Victoria in its list of "30 Incredible Women Moving Southern Food Forward." She is also a 2019 national winner of United Photo’s The Fence with the visual exhibition CRAVINGS, a project produced with photographer Lauren Vied Allen. In 2018 she was among 12 selected filmmakers for a film journalism workshop at UC Berkeley's Investigative Reporting Program. 

Victoria has a master's degree from the Folklore program in American Studies at UNC-Chapel Hill (2016). She graduated from UNC's School of Journalism (2005), with a focus on news writing, and a second B.A. in Spanish. She co-instructed a Spring 2021 community journalism class at the UNC Hussman School.

(Full resume and academic CV available upon request.)