Weekend America Voices
Sylvia Maria Gross
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Sylvia Maria Gross is a reporter for 89.3 FM, KCUR--Kansas City’s NPR station. Gross hosts and produces KC Currents, an award-winning weekly news magazine that covers news and culture in Kansas City’s diverse communities. Her stories have aired nationally on Weekend America, Morning Edition, Day to Day, Marketplace, The World and Studio 360. Gross grew up in New York City, Brazil and the suburbs of Washington, DC. She studied English at Yale University, and then spent a year researching arts education in Brazil on a Fulbright grant. She taught middle school math and English while completing a master's degree in journalism at Columbia University in New York City when she returned from Brazil. She reported in New York City about education and culture for radio and print before moving to Kansas City in 2004.
Recent Stories
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Kansas gambles on state-owned casino
Some states are turning to casinos as part of a solution to huge budget deficits. Kansas has gone one step further and is actually setting up the first state-owned gambling operation in the country. Sylvia Maria Gross reports.
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Cities can't afford loans for basics
Local governments are feeling the pinch from the credit crisis. Water, sewer and road repairs are taking a backseat as governments try to scrounge up enough cash to keep cities running. Sylvia Maria Gross reports.
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Mariachi Mama
Eighty-eight-year-old violinist Teresa Cuevas says being bitten by "Mariachi Fever" decades ago led her to form an extraordinary musical group. This is the story of one of the first all-female mariachi band in the U.S., and of the tragedy that devastated its tight-knit community.
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Paying to Burn the Prairie Grass
Rising grain prices has some Midwestern cattle ranchers looking for other ways to make money from their land. One rancher has a novel idea -- he charges tourists to help him burn his prairie grass during his annual spring burn-off.
