FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Friday, July 1, 2022
PRESS CONTACT: Clare Lefebure
WASHINGTON, DC (July 1, 2022) – Today, NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ Journalists and The Curve Foundation announced the recipients of the Curve Award for Emerging Journalists. The recipients of the 2022 Curve Award for Emerging Journalists are Priya Arora, Leo Aquino, Megan Mitchell, Holly Regan and Abbey White. The award, sponsored by the Curve Foundation, provides financial support to emerging journalists whose work fosters fair and accurate coverage and elevates the voices of LGBTQ women.
“We are delighted to announce another round of recipients of our Curve Award for Emerging Journalists,” said NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ Journalists Executive Director Adam K. Pawlus. “The individuals selected for this award have demonstrated a deep and abiding commitment to elevating the voices of LGBTQ women and nonbinary people, and we are proud to support them and their work. We are excited to see where their careers will lead them in the years to come.”
“We’re excited to welcome another cohort of thoughtful, informed and empowered journalists into the Curve community,” said The Curve Foundation Executive Director Jasmine Sudarkasa. “Each award winner brings a complexity and nuance to connecting our community, and we look forward to learning alongside them this year. Storytellers that stand for their values and build points of connection are critical to our resilience in times like these.”
The Curve Award for Emerging Journalists includes a $5,000 cash award and access to unique professional development opportunities. The awardees will form a cohort and work with mentors to build skills and foster an active support network. The Curve Award for Emerging Journalists will be presented annually and nominations for the 2023 award will become available next Spring.
Arora has been an editor at The New York Times since 2018, where they currently serve as a co-chair of Times Out, NYT’s employee resource group for LGBTQ+ employees. Arora is a former South Asian Journalists Association board member and has covered South Asian pop culture for more than ten years, with bylines at The Times, HuffPost, India.com, Brown Girl Magazine and The Aerogram. Their newsletter, “Priya’s Kitty Party,” regularly reviews South Asian streaming content. With a passion for telling stories and uplifting underrepresented communities, they also currently host “Queering Desi,” an interview-based podcast featuring South Asian LGBTQ+ people.
Aquino is a non-binary Filipinx journalist and poet living on Tongva Land (aka Los Angeles). They are the founder of Queer & Trans Wealth, a resource hub for anti-capitalist personal finance. They are committed to uplifting stories of BIPOC, queer and trans people through storytelling.
Mitchell is an Emmy-Award winning anchor and reporter in Cincinnati, OH. Since 2016, she has anchored the #1 weekend morning news show. In her first job out of college, Mitchell was the morning anchor in Bismarck, North Dakota. She was the first reporter to break the story of the Standing Rock Reservation’s opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline, which caused international uproar. In 2017, Mitchell’s work received first place out of every local news station in the country by the NLGJA: The National Association of LGBTQ Journalists for her documentary covering two-spirit Native Americans. She received the award for Best TV News Reporter in the state from the North Dakota Broadcast Association and a dozen other local broadcast awards. She grew up in Brookfield, CT and graduated from Emerson College in 2014 with a B.S. in Broadcast Journalism.
Regan is a queer and nonbinary writer, editor, artist, and journalist whose work explores the human experience at the intersection of underrepresented identities and altered states of consciousness. They are a native of Seattle, Washington, but live and work as a digital nomad, roaming the Earth in search of inspiration, connection and community. Their work encompasses all that defies the binary, with a particular focus on plant medicine and psychedelics, queer theory and spirituality, food, and craft beer. They are a spiritual seeker who finds enlightenment in queer spaces and shared sacraments, from plants to pints; as an anthropology major and artist, they are endlessly fascinated by people and the multiple mediums in which they express themselves. They are also an avid reader, runner, cyclist, cook and podcast listener.
White is a Brooklyn-based editor, reporter, web producer and fact-checker currently serving as an associate editor for The Hollywood Reporter. Their work is largely focused in the culture and entertainment beats, with an emphasis on stories that intersect with LGBTQIA+, race and disability-related topics. They have written news, features, reviews, opinion essays, interviews, lists and more, which have appeared in Billboard, Food & Wine, Entertainment Weekly, People, Business Insider, Vox, The Nation, Gothamist, USA TODAY Network, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Paste Magazine, 5280 Magazine, The Mary Sue, Syfy Wire and more. They earned their M.A. in Journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY and earned their B.A. in Liberal Studies with a certificate in journalism from Cleveland State University.
For more information about awards, visit www.nlgja.org.
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About NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ Journalists:
NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ Journalists is a journalist-led association working within the news media to advance fair and accurate coverage of LGBTQ communities and issues. We promote diverse and inclusive workplaces by holding the industry accountable and providing education, professional development and mentoring. For more information, visit www.nlgja.org.
About The Curve Foundation:
Built on 30 years of Curve, the world’s best-selling lesbian magazine, The Curve Foundation works to empower and amplify the voices of the Curve Community – lesbians, queer women, trans women, and non-binary people of all races, ages, and abilities. The Curve Foundation’s initial programs include: the Curve Award for Emerging Journalists, created to recognize emerging journalists and raise the visibility of LGBTQ+ women and non-binary people; and the Curve Archive, a permanent and searchable archive of 30 years of magazine issues. For more information, visit thecurvefoundation.org