Books & Browse Authors Panel Announced for JAWS CAMP 2026

Seven nonfiction authors have been selected to represent Journalism & Women Symposium (JAWS) during the Books & Browse Authors Panel & Book-Signing at JAWS CAMP 2026 in Santa Monica, CA.

The conference will be held Oct 2-4 at The Hyatt Centric Delfina. The Books & Browse panel is scheduled for late afternoon on Saturday, October 3 with a reception and book-signing to follow. Books will be available to purchase at the reception. More details to be announced.

MEET THE AUTHORS:

Nicole Carr

Nicole Carr - The Price of Exclusion: The Pursuit of Healthcare in a Segregated Nation

From award-winning journalist Nicole Carr comes a landmark narrative revealing the untold history of Black medical professionals who have long fought to heal their communities—while confronting a system built to exclude them. Through vivid storytelling and meticulous research, Carr resurrects the lives of pioneers who transformed medicine against impossible odds. Bold, moving, and essential, The Price of Exclusion is both a necessary history and a testament to the resilience of Black medical pioneers past and present. At a moment when diversity, equity, and inclusion in medicine are under political attack, Carr forces us to reckon with the past while imagining a future where healthcare truly values every single life.

Nicole Carr is a journalist, author, Ph.D. scholar and assistant professor at Morehouse College. She teaches social justice journalism, investigative and multimedia reporting, and Black press history. Carr's investigations have earned multiple regional Emmys, a Sidney award, and "must-read" long-form narrative citations. Her work centers race, democracy, and education-from the Big Lie to parental rights and anti-DEI movements. That work has appeared in multiple outlets including WSB-TV, CNN, ProPublica, PBS Frontline, the New York Public Library's Borrowed and Banned podcast, The Emancipator, Atlanta Magazine and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Robin Davis

Robin Davis - Surviving Paris: A Memoir of Healing in the City of Light

Surviving Paris is a candid memoir by Robin Allison Davis, a young Black woman whose dream of life in Paris turns into a harrowing journey through breast cancer, recurrence, and the strictest Covid-19 lockdowns. Far from Emily in Paris, it follows her multiple surgeries, culture shock, and struggle to navigate a medical system—and society—that doesn’t fully understand her. Darkly funny and deeply heartfelt, the book explores building community far from home and learning radical self-advocacy. It’s ultimately a story of adventure, self-love, and an unexpected second chance at life.

Born in Washington, D.C., the author lived in Paris for the past ten years. She is an Emmy Award-winning journalist and producer with over 15 years of experience developing and producing impactful content for a variety of audiences and mediums.
She is knowledgeable in French and US television markets, with extensive experience in both scripted and unscripted content, expertise in adaptations for creative content, and regular engagement with high-level stakeholders across corporations, governments, entertainment, and international organizations. Deeply passionate about producing dynamic original content.

Carol Guensburg

Carol Guensburg (speaking on behalf of late author Alicia Shepard - The Luckiest Unlucky Couple: A Medical Love Story

A late-in-life love story unfolds between two adventurers and then everything changes. When he is cured, she is diagnosed, and what follows is a journey of resilience, courage, and the power of love. The story goes something like this: successful journalist and author, Alicia (Lisa), in her late 50s, is single and mostly happy but has given up on finding love again after her first marriage ended abruptly. Out of the blue, he is diagnosed with melanoma, which has traveled to his brain. Through immunotherapy, he gets cured. And through the process of his illness, she and his children---not especially close before---become a family. That is the first half of the book. Not long after he is pronounced cured, she is diagnosed with lung cancer. That is the second half of the book, wherein she struggles with cancer, dying, surrendering to support, gets remarried, and ultimately finds deeper love for all things. The book not only details her emotional journey, it also contains a lot of useful information on cutting-edge immunotherapy techniques, and how to live in the moment when that is not your predisposition. The epilogue, written by her husband, shares life after Lisa's passing. In the appendix the couple shares helpful tips for patients and families wrestling with cancer.

Alicia Shepard was an award-winning journalist, professor, media trainer, media critic, and op-ed writer whose writing was published in leading outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, and People magazine. She is a former ombudsman for National Public Radio and contributor to USA Today and NBC News.

Carol Guensburg is an independent journalist in Arlington, Va. In 2024, she wrapped up a decade with the Voice of America, with roles including reporting and editing, overseeing news standards for the agency, and collaborating with international journalists on web, TV and radio coverage for audiences abroad. She was an associate editor for the American Journalism Review, based at the University of Maryland, where she later founded and directed a national journalism fellowships program to deepen coverage of policies affecting children and families. Carol worked for several newspapers, primarily for the Milwaukee Journal and Journal Sentinel, leading its magazine and food sections. She co-founded American Food Roots (now defunct), an award-winning online magazine of food, culture and history. She has served on the JAWS board and helped coordinate programming for the 2007 camp in her native Wisconsin's Door County. For fun, she plays keyboards in the all-female, Celtic-centric band Malarkey.

Regina Mahone

Regina Mahone - Liberating Abortion

In Liberating Abortion, award-winning abortion activist Renee Bracey Sherman and journalist Regina Mahone explain the long racist history of abortion in the United States, uncover the hidden figures who set the foundation activists and storytellers are building on today, and explain how abortion has been and remains essential to the health of our communities. Liberating Abortion includes interviews with over 50 people of color who’ve had abortions, including activists, actresses, television writers, politicians, and two Black members of Jane, the Chicago feminist service that provided abortions before Roe. 

Regina Mahone is a writer and journalist covering reproductive justice issues. Her mission as an editor is to develop and amplify underrepresented voices in online and print media. Regina currently serves as a senior editor at The Nationmagazine, where she founded Repro Nation, a free, monthly newsletter providing the latest news and analysis on the global struggle for reproductive freedom. In June 2023, she co-edited with her Nation colleague Emily Douglas a special double issue of the print magazine on reproductive rights and justice, titled Body Politics. She and We Testify Founder Renee Bracey Sherman are co-authors of the book Liberating Abortion: Claiming Our History, Sharing Our Stories, and Building the Reproductive Future We Deserve from Amistad/HarperCollins, and co-hosts of the podcast The A Files: A Secret History of Abortion from The Meteor. Regina has written for publications including Cosmopolitan, ELLE, Lux, Rewire News Group, Romper, The Nation, and Truthout.

Previously, Regina served as vice president, editorial content, at Courier Newsroom, a national news organization dedicated to helping people better understand what’s happening in our local and national governments, and as vice president and managing editor at Rewire News Group, a nonprofit media organization devoted to evidence-based reporting on reproductive and sexual health, rights, and justice. Prior to that, Regina was a staff writer at Philanthropy News Digest, a publication of the Foundation Center, where she covered the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors. And before that, she was a freelance writer and editor.

Renee Bracey Sherman

Renee Bracey Sherman - Liberating Abortion

Renee Bracey Sherman is a reproductive justice activist, abortion storyteller, and writer. For a decade she led We Testify, an organization she founded dedicated to the leadership and representation of people who have abortions and share their stories at the intersection of race, class, and gender identity. She is also an executive producer of Ours to Tell, an award-winning documentary elevating the voices of people who've had abortions. In 2024, she and her co-author Regina Mahone released their debut book, LIBERATING ABORTION: Claiming Our History, Sharing Our Stories, and Building the Reproductive Future We Deserve and they are also the co-hosts of The A Files: A Secret History of Abortion, a podcast from The Meteor. Currently, she is a PhD student at American University’s School of Communication.

Alice Miranda Ollstein

Alice Miranda Ollstein - Side Effects: How abortion bans impact everyone's health 

Side Effects, the debut book of POLITICO senior health care reporter Alice Miranda Ollstein, explores the myriad ways the end of Roe v. Wade and the rise of state abortion bans are having ripple effects throughout the American medical system. Ollstein takes the reader inside medical schools, hospital emergency rooms, research labs, medical societies, and pharmacies to reveal how health care became both less accessible and lower quality for millions of people in the wake of the Dobbs decision, even for those who think they are not impacted due to their gender, age, socioeconomic status or geographic location.

Alice Miranda Ollstein is a senior health care reporter for POLITICO, with a focus on health care in the states. Her coverage of state and federal health policy developments on Capitol Hill, within government agencies, in the courts, and on the campaign trail draws connections between decisions made by elected officials and their impact on the ground. She has broken stories on the Covid-19 response, the strategies of both anti-abortion and pro-abortion-rights groups, and both the Biden and Trump transitions.

Alice graduated from Oberlin College in 2010 and has been reporting in D.C. ever since, covering the Supreme Court, Congress and national elections for TV, radio, print, and online outlets. Her work has aired on Free Speech Radio News, All Things Considered, WAMU and WTOP, and her writing has been published by Talking Points Memo, The Atlantic, and La Opinión. She was elected in 2016 as an at-large board member of the DC Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. In 2017, she was named one of the New Media Alliance's "Rising Stars" under 30.

Karla Vallance

For much of her life, Mary Baker Eddy was told she couldn’t. She couldn’t overcome chronic illness. She couldn’t support herself as a woman alone. And she certainly couldn’t challenge the way people understood God, medicine, and the power of thought. But she did all three. In When the World Said No, journalist Karla Vallance tells the remarkable true story of a woman who refused to accept the limits placed on her life—or her ideas. Before she became one of the most controversial religious figures in America, Eddy spent years struggling with poverty, illness, and personal loss. Yet out of those hardships emerged a bold set of ideas about faith, healing, and the influence of thought on human experience. Those ideas would eventually lead to the founding of Christian Science and ignite fierce national debates about religion, medicine, and the nature of spiritual authority.

Some hailed her as a visionary. Others dismissed her as dangerous or deluded. Newspapers attacked her. Critics tried to silence her. But the movement she built continued to grow. More than a century later, the questions she raised remain part of modern conversations about spirituality, mind-body healing, and the power of belief.

Karla Valance is the former Regional Editor of Patch Media | AOL, and taught journalism at Emerson College as well as Boston University. She served as managing editor of Christian Science Monitor, and Executive Producer & Managing Editor at Monitor Radio. Prior to that she was Writer/Editor/Producer, CNN and CNN International.

Michele Weldon

PANEL MODERATOR Michelle Weldon

Michele Weldon is an award-winning author of seven nonfiction books, TEDx speaker, emerita faculty in journalism at Medill School at Northwestern University and an award-winning journalist for magazine, newspaper, digital sites for the past four decades.