Brittany Shammas is a staff writer at Miami New Times. She was born in Orlando and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan, after her family decided to trade the Sunshine State for the frozen Midwest. Upon graduating from Michigan State University, where she was a writer and editor for the school paper, she promptly moved back to Florida. She covered education in Naples before taking a job at the South Florida Sun Sentinel, where she wrote about crime, general assignment, and education. She joined New Times in 2016.