Peggy (McKay) Shinn was born in New Haven, Connecticut, and raised in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, where she learned to ski, ride her bike in the woods, and eat asparagus and strawberries from her dad’s organic garden.
Over 18 years, she covered eight Olympic Games for TeamUSA.com and is currently the World Cup editor for SKI Magazine. She has also contributed to Cross Country Skier, Ski Racing, Skiing, Outside, MSNBC.com, and Vermont Life, as well as the Boston Globe, Rutland Herald, and Burlington Free Press. For her work in ski writing, she is a five-time winner of the Harold Hirsch S. Award for best feature writing, presented annually by NASJA, and in 2019, received the Paul Robbins Journalism Award from the Vermont Ski & Snowboard Museum’s Hall of Fame.
Peggy attended Phillips Exeter Academy, then Amherst College, where she competed in Varsity crew and alpine skiing and graduated with a B.A. in geology. She then moved out West, where she completed two masters degrees and raced her bicycle. She competed in such suffer-fests as the Leadville 100, 24 Hours of Moab, and Ore-Ida Women’s Challenge; climbed most of Colorado’s 14,000-foot peaks; and earned a Master of Arts in Teaching at Colorado College and an M.S. in Environmental Science & Engineering from the Colorado School of Mines. She taught earth science and sex ed to middle schoolers, learned how to treat drinking water and hazardous waste, and realized that she had no interest in pursuing either career longterm.
She moved back to Vermont in 1997 and now lives in Rutland with her husband, daughter, and no remaining cats.
