Maplewoodian Nancy Solomon is a Senior Reporter for WNYC and founding editor of New Jersey Public Radio, which won a 2014 Peabody Award for Chris Christie, White House Ambitions and the Abuse of Power.

She will be receiving the Carol Buchanan Award for Outstanding Contribution to Civic and Intellectual Life. 

Solomon fell in love with radio reporting and production at KLCC in Eugene, Oregon, in 1995. She moved to New Jersey in 2001 and has been covering the state ever since. She has produced more than a hundred stories for NPR and was a 2008-09 Spencer Fellow in Education Reporting at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. During that year, Solomon produced “Mind the Gap: Why Good Schools are Failing Black Students” for which she won a Peabody Award. Long before becoming a journalist, Solomon was the first woman ever hired to work on the county road crew in Portland, Oregon.

Nancy will be in conversation with Deborah Goldstein. Deborah is a producer for The Takeaway, a podcast and national public radio show focusing on the American conversation with host Melissa Harris-Perry. She is also the executive producer and host of the Gen-Z Media game show podcast, The Big Fib. Deborah lives in South Orange.

Free and open to the public. Township safety protocols will be followed.
The Ideas Festival is made possible by the Essex County Division of Cultural Affairs, a partner of the New Jersey State Council on the Arts AND The Maplewood Library Foundation, the Friends of the Maplewood Library, and [words] Bookstore.