Talking about JAWS
2022 Impact Report
2021 Impact Report
2020 Impact Report
Looking for a book to read? You just might find your new favorite at the Conference & Mentoring Project in Welches, Oregon, next month.
Eight authors will share three-minute excerpts of their latest work during the first-ever Journalism & Women Symposium Books & Browse lightning readings. Then, if you like what you hear, head to the Books & Browse reception that will follow where you can chat with the authors, purchase their books and get them autographed.
In addition to our eight featured authors, this year’s Fran Lewine interviewee Melissa Ludtke will also sell her book at Books & Browse. So come prepared to talk shop over a glass of wine and purchase a book—or several!
After the Education Wars: How Smart Schools Upend the Business of Reform (CAMP sale price: $23)
By Andrea Gabor
Over two decades, the mainstream educational establishment lost its way, resulting in billions wasted on the latest education-technology fads, standardized testing regimes that have squeezed the joy and creativity out of learning, and teacher accountability systems that have chased away the most promising educators.
Bestselling author and veteran business journalist Andrea Gabor (Business Week, US News and World Report) shows, in her new book, how the mainstream education establishment adopted all the wrong lessons from American business and ignored the successful, from-the-ground-up strategies for improving schools that are hiding in plain sight all across the country.
In “After the Education Wars: How Smart Schools Upend the Business of Reform,” Gabor profiles novel experiments in very different public school systems in New York, Massachusetts, Texas, and Louisiana that eschew short-sighted mandates, punitive teacher evaluations, and standardized testing and have produced resilient improvement efforts that have stood the test of time.
Andrea Gabor is the Bloomberg Chair of Business Journalism at Baruch College/CUNY.
Beautiful Exiles ($20 hardcover, $15 paperback)
By Meg Waite Clayton
Writers. Muses. Rivals. Headstrong, accomplished journalist Martha Gellhorn is confident with words but less so with men when she meets disheveled literary titan Ernest Hemingway in a dive bar in Key West, in 1936. Their friendship—forged over writing, talk, and family dinners—flourishes into something undeniable in Madrid while they’re covering the Spanish Civil War. With their romance unfolding as they travel the globe, Martha establishes herself as one of the world’s foremost war correspondents, and Hemingway begins the novel that will win him the Nobel Prize for Literature. Beautiful Exiles is a stirring story of lovers and rivals, of the breathless attraction to power and fame, and of one woman—ahead of her time—claiming her own identity from the wreckage of love.
Meg Waite Clayton is the bestselling author of six novels, most recently “Beautiful Exiles.” Her prior novels include the Langum-Prize honored “The Race for Paris”; “The Language of Light,” a finalist for the Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction (now the PEN/Bellwether); and “The Wednesday Sisters,” one of Entertainment Weekly’s 25 Essential Best Friend Novels of all time. See more at megwaiteclayton.com.
White Dresses ($10)
By Mary Pflum
White Dresses, a New York Times bestselling book, is a poignant memoir of three generations of women and the white dresses that adorned them. As a successful journalist at Good Morning America, Mary Pflum Peterson’s persona is at odds with her complicated childhood, where she watched her brilliant yet emotionally vulnerable mother, Anne, unravel before her eyes. But their love of white dresses always united them—from their baptism dresses to their wedding gowns, white dresses embodied hope and new beginnings.
After her mother’s sudden death, Mary dug deep to understand the events that led to Anne’s breakdown. At twenty-one, Anne entered a convent, but lengthy periods of enforced fasting, isolation, and constant humiliation drove her to flee almost a decade later. Hoping to find new purpose as a wife and mother, she married, and was devastated when Mary’s father revealed himself to be gay.
Anne retreated into chaos. By the time Mary was ten, their house was cluttered with broken appliances, stacks of mail, and teetering piles of assorted “treasures.” But in spite of everything, their bond endured. Through the white dresses, pivotal events in their lives were celebrated, marking the journey through loss and redemption as Mary tried to save Anne from herself.
Mary Pflum Peterson is a multi-Emmy-award winning television journalist. Currently employed as a producer at NBC News, she oversees coverage of Today Show and Nightly News segments. Pflum Peterson began her career at CNN where she worked as both an international producer and on-camera reporter and spent time at posts in Atlanta, New York, Berlin and Istanbul. Pflum Peterson went on to become a lead producer at Good Morning America and was part of the team that took GMA to number one in the highly-competitive morning show ratings race. Pflum Peterson is the recipient of five Emmy Awards, a duPont, a Peabody Award and a Writers’ Guild of America Award for excellence in feature writing for national television. She and her husband, Dean, are raising their four young children in New York.
The Woman With The Oil ($15)
By Jazmin Bailey
“The Woman With The Oil” is an inside look at the dark and lonely world of domestic violence. News anchor and author Jazmin Bailey gets personal about the abuse she endured, all while smiling in front of the camera on local morning TV. Consider it required reading and the perfect reminder for any woman — single, married or divorced — to never give up on yourself.
Jazmin Bailey is a multi-talented creative who believes in the power of authenticity. As a published author, motivational speaker, and Emmy Award-winning TV personality, she shares her story of perseverance and faith through a variety of media. Jazmin is the creator of The Woman With The Oil, an inspirational platform for young women. There, she equips others to win with bold, victorious accounts of her own life. In her first book, “The Woman With The Oil,” Jazmin recounts the agonizing moments of her violent two-year marriage. The transparent tale is a notice to the world that there is life beyond abuse, in its many forms.
The Girls in the Balcony: Women, Men and the New York Times
By Nan Robertson
Betsy Wade will sell first- and second-edition copies of “The Girls in the Balcony: Women, Men and the New York Times” by Nan Robertson at Books & Browse, in place of Dava Sobel. “The Girls in the Balcony” recounts the fight for equal pay at the New York Times.
Forget ‘Having It All’: How America Messed Up Motherhood — and How to Fix It
By Amy Westervelt
After filing a story for a journalism assignment two days after giving birth, Amy Westervelt had a revelation: we treat mothers like crap in this country. And while working dads have it better in a lot of ways, all of us are suffering under a system that values competition and individual success over caregiving and community. In Forget “Having It All”: How America Messed Up Motherhood—and How to Fix It, Westervelt shows how cultural ideals of the “good mother” evolved over time to suit the changing needs of the country, from colonial days through the Industrial Revolution, WWII, and the present—ending each chapter with cultural and policy fixes that would move us toward a model of parenting that works for the modern era.
Amy Westervelt is an award-winning business and environmental journalist whose work has appeared in The Guardian, Popular Science, Elle, and other outlets. She is the producer of Gaslit Nation, a top-ranking podcast.
The Diversity Style Guide ($48.50)
By Rachele Kanigel
“The Diversity Style Guide” aims to help journalists and other media professionals write with accuracy and authority about a diverse society. Based on studies, news reports and more than 20 others style guides, as well as interviews with more than 50 journalists and experts, it offers the best, most up-to-date advice on writing about underrepresented and often misrepresented groups, as well as sensitive issues such as immigration, mental health, substance abuse and suicide.
The book can be used as a handbook by journalists and other media professionals or as a textbook for instructors and students exploring journalism ethics, media diversity and reporting on diverse communities.
“The Diversity Style Guide” comes in two parts. Part One offers chapters on why diversity is so important, implicit bias and tips on covering different communities and hot-button issues. Contributors include Cristina Azocar, Sandra L. Combs, Kristin Gilger, Joe Grimm, Sally Lehrman, Osama Siblani and Venise Wagner.
Part Two is a Journalist’s Toolbox that includes diversity and inclusion activities, a calendar of special events related to diversity and an A-Z Guide with definitions and guidance on nearly 500 terms, from abaya to Zionism. Updates are posted regularly and additional material is available on the website DiversityStyleGuide.com.
Rachele Kanigel is a professor of journalism at San Francisco State University, where she teaches writing, reporting and media entrepreneurship classes. She also writes, mostly about health, diversity issues and journalism education, for magazines and websites. She was a reporter for 15 years for daily newspapers, including The Oakland Tribune and The News & Observer of Raleigh, North Carolina, and was a freelance correspondent for TIME magazine. Her work has appeared in U.S. News and World Report, Prevention, Health, San Francisco Magazine, Reader’s Digest and other print and online publications. She is the author of The Student Newspaper Survival Guide, now in its second edition.
From Mango Cuba to Prickly Pear America — An American’s Journey to Castro’s Cuba and Back ($15)
By Melinda Voss
A cross between a travel memoir and a primer on Cuba, this slim volume explores Cuba’s complexity, its leaders, people, culture and relationship with America. The author also offers a concise and carefully researched comparison between the two New World countries as a new and uncertain era of Cuban-American relations dawns.
An award-winning reporter, Melinda Voss was a staff writer for The Des Moines Register and Tribune for nearly 26 years. She has taught journalism at three universities. In 1999, she earned a master’s degree in public health from the University of Minnesota. A co-founder of the Association of Health Care Journalists, she served as its first executive director until 2005. She went on to become public relations director for the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system. Now retired, she has six grandchildren and lives in Saint Paul, Minn. with her dog, Bunny. Her book, From Mango Cuba to Prickly Pear America – An American’s Journey to Castro’s Cuba and Back, is her first book.
Touching Home in China: in search of missing girlhoods
By Melissa Ludtke
Abandoned as newborns in China, adopted by American families, Jennie and Maya return as teenagers to the rural towns where their lives began. Girls their age who grew up there tell them about their lives as Chinese daughters. The American teens, wrestling with the duality of their personal identity, discover what their lives might have been had their birth families raised them in China. The Chinese girls learn from their new friends – who are the first foreigners they’ve ever met – about what happened to some of the girl babies who were abandoned in China and find out what it’s like growing up as an American girl who looks like they do. “Touching Home in China” is a rare cross-cultural exploration of China through the lens of women’s and girls’ lives.
Melissa Ludtke is the author of “Touching Home in China: in search of missing girlhoods.” In her award-winning career as a journalist, producer and author, she reported at Sports Illustrated, was a correspondent with Time, and the editor of Nieman Reports at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Her lifelong engagement with girls and women’s issues led her to write “On Our Own: Unmarried Motherhood in America” (Random House, 1997). She is writing a narrative social history of the 1970s women’s movement called “Locker Room Talk, drawing from her experience as plaintiff in the federal case Ludtke v. Kuhn. That case secured equal access for women to report, as male reporters did, in Major League Baseball locker rooms.
