D Magazine Profiles KERA's Doualy Xaykaothao

KERA’s very own Doualy Xaykaothao makes an appearance in the March edition of D Magazine.

The magazine, on newsstands now, features an extended interview with the newest member of the station’s news department. Xaykaothao joined KERA after spending several years covering Asia for NPR.

But Xaykaothao is familiar with North Texas. She’s from Grand Prairie.

Here are excerpts:

Why join the station after covering Asia?

“The stories here are just as rich as the ones in Fukushima or Bangkok or Kathmandu,” she told D Magazine’s Tim Rogers. “The personalities here, the characters here, the voices here—we could create all kinds of Broadway shows. I’m proud to come back here and look at all that.”

Xaykaothao was born in Laos, but eventually moved to North Texas. Why here?

“My father was a village kid in Laos,” she said. “He was selected to go and study in Paris. France was the colonizer at the time. He was in Paris during the war. Long story short, when the war happened, my mom took us out, with my grandparents, to France and then eventually to the United States. My grandparents felt that Texas was this wide-open space where they could start again and be reborn in a different culture.”

What does she think about having to do pledge drives? (By the way, we’re conducting our winter pledge drive right now!)

“I am one of the finest raffle-ticket sellers,” she said. “If you give me something, I can sell it. I don’t think the pledge drive is going to be a problem at all. I challenge Jeff Whittington,” host of KERA’s Anything You Ever Wanted To Know and a prolific on-air fundraiser.

Read the rest of the interview here.

Update: Challenge accepted, Whittington says. He's wearing his special pledge jumpsuit today: