Visit with friends and colleagues. Have a beverage from the bar. Bid on some fabulous auction items. Relax and unwind after a full weekend of activities and learning. And dance the night away while making plans for next year. The NLGJA 2019 Closing Reception will cap off this year’s convention with the annual Auction and Awards Reception, where we will honor the best in the business, including NLGJA’s Journalist of the Year and the Sarah Pettit LGBTQ Journalist of the Year and inductees into the LGBTQ Journalists Hall of Fame.
Emcees: Bethany Grace Howe, Sean Lewis, Femi Redwood
BETHANY GRACE HOWE, PH.D. is a former newspaper writer and editor, as well as having served as a high school journalism teacher in the Pacific Northwest for 15 years. Having recently completed her doctorate at the University of Oregon, she continues her research into transgender identity as it is impacted by media and interpersonal communications. She serves as a writer for The Syndrome Mag, a feminist humor website, and The Eugene Register-Guard, in Oregon’s southern Willamette Valley.
Award-winning journalist SEAN LEWIS is an anchor of “WGN Saturday Morning News” and “WGN Sunday Morning News,” with the expansion of weekend news in September 2016. Prior to that, Lewis filed reports for “WGN News at Five” and “WGN News Nine” during the week. He joined CLTV in March 2007 and WGN-TV in June 2008. Lewis came back home to Chicagoland after more than two years as weekend anchor at WWBT-TV, the NBC affiliate in Richmond, Virginia. He grew up watching Chicago news but has lived and worked throughout the Midwest, reporting in Fargo, North Dakota; Madison, Wisconsin; and Rockford, Illinois. He is a native of Kenosha, Wisconsin. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
FEMI REDWOOD anchors the weekend evening newscasts and is a reporter during the week at NBC 25 and Fox 66 News. She enjoys covering breaking news but also loves telling stories that matter to the community. Her goal is to always be a better journalist today than she was yesterday. Redwood grew up in Delaware and South Carolina but calls Brooklyn, New York, her home. She is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists and NLGJA. Redwood is a graduate of Jackson State University, a historically black college in Mississippi. She jokes that she is “Jamerican” (Jamaican and American), and is always looking for a great place to find Caribbean food. She is obsessed with antique furniture and vintage clothes.