Required Reading: 6 Journalists Share Truth, Justice, Transformation and Insights

At the recent Journalism & Women Symposium, books & Browse event, L to R: Maura Casey, Deborah Hines, Susan Page, Mary Annette Pember, Michele Weldon, Brigid Schulte, Miranda Spivack.

By Dorine Bethea

A desire for better drives Brigid Schulte, director of Better Life Lab, the work-family justice and gender equity program at New America. That desire inspired her to report and report some more and, eventually, to publish her most recent book, Over Work: Transforming the Daily Grind in the Quest for a Better Life.

Speaking at the recent Journalism & Women Symposium CAMP’s Books & Browse session in Washington, D.C., Schulte says, “I wish I didn't have to write this book. I would love to wake up tomorrow and find that the world is a fair and equitable place, and that all people have the opportunity to live a good life and to flourish.”

Schulte’s mission began decades ago. As a journalist for The Washington Post, the mother of two young children says she struggled to manage her family and work life. A woman’s time, she began to understand, has always been interrupted and undervalued.

“ I would love to wake up tomorrow and find that the world is a fair and equitable place, and that all people have the opportunity to live a good life and to flourish,” says Brigid Schulte, author of Over Work @womenjournos #CAMP2025 @BetterLifeLab”

“When women entered the workforce en masse in the ’70s – no surprise – women’s lives changed utterly, and very little else did,” Schulte says. “Workplaces didn’t change appreciatively, public policies didn’t change appreciatively, and then we didn’t really talk about it. We didn’t write about it.”

Schulte is one of six authors who shared insights into how and why they decided to delve into urgent, timely and historical examinations of atrocities at Native American boarding schools, injustice in the criminal justice system, government corruption and fierce women – some famous and others who may become famous.

Michele Weldon, a longtime JAWS member , seven-time author, and editorial director at Take The Lead, is moderator of the annual the panel discussion that in 2025 highlighted works by Maura Casey; Deborah Hines; Susan Page; Mary Annette Pember; and Miranda S. Spivak.

“They have done scrupulous reporting and tireless research, creating incredibly necessary and important nonfiction books that must be part of our modern conversation,” Weldon says.

Maura Casey’s book, Saving Ellen: A Memoir of Hope and Recovery, focuses on her mother, a “feminist before there was a word for it,” who was determined to help save her sister Ellen, who desperately needed a kidney transplant.

“She was kick-ass,” Casey says, noting her mother defied her father by joining the U.S. Army during World War II. “That prepared her for her own platoon of kids,” with Casey, the youngest.

“The family doctor told my mother that Ellen wasn’t going to live beyond the age of 18 and be glad she had five other children. Well, my mother basically said, ‘not today.’”
Her mom went on a campaign to get doctors to let her donate a kidney for her daughter. “Back then, the unusual kidney transplant was sort of like the medical equivalent of walking on the moon.”

“Back then, the unusual kidney transplant was sort of like the medical equivalent of walking on the moon,” says Maura Casey, author of, Saving Ellen: A Memoir of Hope and Recovery. @womenjournos #books #kidneytransplant #memoir”

Some details escaped Casey, who says she has kept diaries since age 12. But after connecting with a brilliant doctor, Mary Hawking – sister of famed physicist Stephen Hawking – Casey says had the medical background she needed to write the book.

In her quest to help secure justice, Deborah Hines, author of Get Off My Neck: Black Lives, White Justice, and a Former Prosecutor's Quest for Reform, writes as a descendant of enslaved people, a former prosecutor, and a trial lawyer whose 16-year-old cousin was imprisoned for five years with hardened criminals following a wrongful conviction.

“The majority of everyone that is impacted in the criminal justice system are Black boys, Black teens and Black young adults,” says Hines, former Maryland assistant attorney general.  “But behind them are women. There are women who are their mothers, who are their daughters, who are changemakers who are making the difference.”

“Majority affected by criminal justice have women behind them. “There are women who are their mothers, who are their daughters, who are changemakers who are making the difference,” says Deborah Hines, author of Get Off My Neck: Black Lives, White Justice, and a Former Prosecutor’s Quest for Reform. @womenjournos #books #BlackLives #criminaljusticereform”

Hines highlights the efforts of those working to reform the system. There is Sharon Battle, a mother whose efforts resulted in the state of Colorado changing the law after her son was wrongly detained. Another mother, Marie Scott, 71, is a legal advocate for women in prison, who, as a young adult, committed a crime and has been imprisoned now more than 50 years.

Then there are professionals -- including Miriam Krinsky, founder of Fair and Just Prosecution, and others in the legal arena who help train police officers, prosecutors and judges on implicit racial basis.

“There are women prosecutors, there are very few, but they are mighty, and they are working toward justice and not looking at punishment but looking at programs,” says Hines, who for years had been writing the book in her head but struggled to find time to do it, until the pandemic closed courtrooms and shut down her legal work. “These are women who are changemakers.”

In media and journalism, few can dispute the impact of Barbara Walters on the industry and women who entered it after her ground-breaking career. Yet, as Susan Page, author of The Rulebreaker: The Life and Times of Barbara Walters,  points out, “Women who have done remarkable things are less likely to have biographies written about them than men.”

Page, the Washington, D.C. bureau chief of  USA Today, has authored two other titles: “Madam Speaker: Nancy Pelosi and the Lessons of Power” and “The Matriarch: Barbara Bush and the Making of an American Dynasty.”

“Women who have done remarkable things are less likely to have biographies written about them than men,” says @USAToday editor Susan Page, author of The Rulebreaker: The Life and Times of Barbara Walters. @womenjournos #BarbaraWalters #media #biography”

“Barbara Walters, who was not only a groundbreaker for women in journalism, she defined and expanded the global age of television news, and yet there was not a single serious biography that had been written about her,” says Page, the Washington bureau chief for USA Today.

“I thought Barbara Walters deserved a serious biography that explored what she did for women in television, what she did for women in print
journalism, and every form of journalism, and what it cost her.”

Walters had already written her memoir, and she was aware of the biography Page had begun researching to write. After carefully reading Walters’s memoir, Page says, “It was so interesting the things she told us that we didn’t know, and it was so interesting the things she told us that were not true.”

Mary Annette Pember, award-winning journalist and author of Medicine River: A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools,A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools,  says her mother inspired her writings about Native American boarding schools. She “placed me on this quest, if you will, to redeem her and to tell her story,” says Pember, speaking first in her native language before switching to English. 

“It’s emblematic of the assimilationist policies that the United States foisted upon native people for so many years, forbidding us from speaking our language.”

Tens of thousands of Native children were pulled from their tribal communities and enrolled in boarding schools run by religious organizations and sponsored by the U.S. government. Pember says she and her brother escaped attending boarding school, where children endured
beatings for speaking their Native language and were denied food. Everyone on her mother’s side of the family and many of her cousins did not escape.

Though the experiences vary, most were horrific, and left lingering trauma.

“In many ways, I pursued the book as a way to really understand the ‘-isms,’ if you will, of my own family,” she says. “It was very redemptive for me, and on many levels.”
Pember says she has been telling stories of Native people for as long as she can remember. The longstanding message from her mother is that she “tell the truth about her life and also the role that these types of assimilationist policies played on the federal government’s relationship with Indigenous peoples in this country, and in my family.”
She adds, “When we look at our history and we look at the degree to which we have held on to our language and culture, we may be among the greatest example of a cultural and language survival in the world.”

““When we look at our history and we look at the degree to which we have held on to our language and culture, we may be among the greatest example of a cultural and language survival in the world,” says Mary Annette Pember, author of Medicine River: A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools,A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools. @womenjournos #NativeStories ”

Miranda Spivak’s pursuit to write the book, Backroom Deals in Our Backyards: How Government Secrecy Harms Our Communities and the Local Heroes Fighting Back, expands on work she had done for a series, “State Secrets,” for Reveal, from the Center for Investigative Reporting.

“I just was finding out all kinds of crazy things that I really thought were important to write about,” the former Washington Post journalist recalls. In D.C, there is an obsession with secrecy in the federal government, but there is secrecy on state and local levels, and “governments are not doing enough to be transparent.”

Her book is about the collision between the two governments for big corporations – the data centers, Amazon and others for example – and how that impedes democracy at the local level.

“Most people who are not journalists, and not lawyers, have no clue how to go about dealing with their state and local governments, and they usually have no need to until something goes wrong in their communities,” says the award-winning journalist and former Fulbright Scholar.

Spivak set out five years ago to find citizens, or people she ultimately describes as “accidental activists,” who encounter a problem in their communities – poisoned drinking water, flawed protective gear for firefighters, failing sewer systems or undisclosed dangerous roads – that government does not resolve.
The premise, to feature several such activists, turned out to be a “tough sell,” she says  
“Every publisher my agent went to said ‘Oh, we want one hero,’” says Spivak, who had no experience in book publishing. “We want Erin Brockovich,’ basically.’”

Her book features five examples of “accidental activists” but “the through line really is that it’s [about] secrecy, and state and local governments are not doing enough to be transparent, and these people have sort of overcome what I call the information blockade.”

The activists and communities in which they live are economically, ethically and geographically diverse, Spivak says. “What goes on at the state and local level is where most people interact with their governments, and people need a lot of help,” she said, adding that the book includes a playbook for “accidental activists and anybody else.”

““What goes on at the state and local level is where most people interact with their governments, and people need a lot of help,” says Miranda Spivak, journo, author of Backroom Deals in Our Backyards: How Government Secrecy Harms Our Communities and the Local Heroes Fighting Back. @womenjournos #communities #justice ”

Dorine Bethea is a copy editor on the universal digiting editing desk at The Washington Post.