Maker of things analog & digital.

A.M. Alpin is an award-winning cineaste, librarian, and scholar who uses digital and analog technology to tell compelling stories. 

Her work has been supported by the Sundance Institute, the Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP), the Austin Film Society, the Southern Humanities Media Fund, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Alpin serves on the faculty of New York University as director of the Library Lab, developing a curated series of pop-up spaces, events, workshops, trainings, projects, and initiatives aimed at preparing libraries and library staff for future unknowns.

She was the co-founder and program director (2014-2021) of The Library Collective, a non-profit whose goal was to redefine the professional development landscape for next-generation librarians. In 2019, she launched the League of Awesome Librarians, an alternative professional membership and privacy-conscious social network for library workers around the world, with a team of incredible volunteers.

A native of Tennessee, Alpin has previously been a Visiting Assistant Professor at Virginia Tech, an Assistant Professor at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, and a production mentor for Stony Brook University's MFA in Film program. 

She is the co-creator of the interactive audio installation, Rule No. 5, and her work as director includes the documentary For Memories’ Sake, which screened at the Library of Congress, the Nashville Film Festival, the Maryland Film Festival, and on the Southern Circuit Tour of Independent Filmmakers, among other venues, and the transmedia project, The Story of the Stuff.

She also produced the critically-acclaimed feature film Something, Anything (2015 New York Times Critics' Pick) and the ITVS co-production Quick Feet, Soft Hands, starring Greta Gerwig, both written and directed by Paul Harrill and writer/director Cameron Nelson's debut feature, Some Beasts (US-in-Progress selection; 2014 IFP Narrative Lab). 

Alpin has also engaged with building communities through video partnerships, empowering youth and communities to tell their own stories as the co-founder and program director of the Blue Ridge Stories Youth Video Workshop (2007-2011), as a video facilitator for Scribe Video Center’s Precious Places Project (2006), and as a guest artist in the Arts Council of the Blue Ridge’s Artists in Schools program (2007-2009).

She is a past recipient of the Sundance Institute's Sheila C. Johnson Creative Producing Fellowship, the American Library Association's Justin Winsor Prize, and the Association of College & Research Libraries' Outstanding Professional Development Award. She has been named one of "10 to Watch" by Independent Magazine and was recognized as a Library Journal "Mover & Shaker" for innovative digital storytelling. 

She and her work have been profiled in a wide array of print and media ranging from Filmmaker Magazine to National Public Radio to American Libraries.