2018 Annual Benefit




Keynote speaker: Liz Welch

Liz Welch is an award-winning journalist and the author of The Kids Are All Right, (Harmony, 2009) a memoir she co-wrote with her siblings about losing both parents—and being separated as a result of that loss–at a young age.  It won a 2010 ALEX Award from the American Library Association and was one of Salon’s best books of 2009.  I Will Always Write Back, (Little Brown, 2015) her second book and a New York Times best seller, is about the long distance and life changing relationship between two pen pals, one from Hatfield, Pennsylvania, the other from Mutare, Zimbabwe.  

She is currently working on two books—one about refugees, the other about a young Kazakh Eagle Huntress from Mongolia—both to be published in 2019 by Little Brown. 

She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and their 7-year-old daughter.

 

David Gregory, Emcee

David Gregory is the host of NBC’s Meet the Press, NBC News Chief White House Correspondent of the Bush presidency, reporting regularly on NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, Today, for NBC News 24-hour cable network MSNBC and on MSNBC.com. Gregory was host of Race for the White House and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue before being named host of Meet the Press in December 2008. Since joining NBC News in 1995, Gregory has covered nearly every major story for the network, from the O.J. Simpson trial to the trial of Timothy McVeigh, from the impeachment of President Clinton to the death of Pope John Paul II in Rome. He was named one of Washington’s 50 best and most influential journalists and, along with his colleagues, won an Emmy for coverage of President Reagan’s death and funeral.