Journalist and Author Mo Rocca to Close Annual Conference

Emmy winner Mo Rocca is a correspondent for “CBS Sunday Morning,” a frequent panelist on NPR’s hit weekly quiz show “Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me!,” and the host of “The Henry Ford’s Innovation Nation” on Saturday mornings. He began his career in television as a writer and producer for the Emmy and Peabody Award–winning PBS children’s series “Wishbone.” He spent four seasons as a correspondent on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and created and hosted Cooking Channel’s “My Grandmother’s Ravioli,” learning to cook from grandparents across America. This session will take place Tuesday, June 25 from 10:00 – 11:30 a.m. at the 2019 ALA Annual Conference & Exhibition in Washington, DC.

Rocca’s long love of obituaries led him to create his new podcast Mobituaries, as well as the associated forthcoming book, available Fall 2019. Mobituaries is an irreverent but deeply researched appreciation of the people and things of the past that have long intrigued him – from an unsung Founding Father to the first Chinese American superstar – from Medieval Medicine to the Station Wagon. Rocca said, “Why should it be only the rich and famous who get obits? Mobituaries celebrates extraordinary people whose names you may not remember, in addition to sitcom characters, historical epochs and even snack foods that have all bitten the dust.”

Rocca will be joined by moderator Barbara Hoffert who has worked for over three decades assigning literary fiction and poetry, planning book events, and writing news and features about books as the editor of Prepub Alert at Library Journal.

His appearance at the conference is sponsored by Simon & Schuster.

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Journalist and Author Mariana Atencio

Mariana Atencio is a journalist, TED Talk speaker, influencer, and award-winning news personality covering domestic and international assignments, breaking news, and special reports. As a first-generation Latina who fled violence and oppression in her native Venezuela, Atencio crossed over from Spanish-to-English language television. This session will take place Monday, June 24 from 8:30 – 9:30 a.m. at the 2019 ALA Annual Conference & Exhibition in Washington, DC.

Her life story and the message of her new book, Perfectly You: Embracing the Power of Being Real, available Summer 2019, is grounded on the discovery of how every single person can come to find their own voice and purpose in a seemingly broken world. But it goes much further than an individual discovery. She said, “It is precisely when we harness our own voice that we, in turn, have an opportunity to use it to create and foster community.” For Atencio, she’s channeled it in storytelling that is cross-cultural, cross-format, and cross-border. A feat that would not have been possible were it not for the events of her life and the stories she has covered. Quoting a line in her book, “to be a human bridge – to show that people on one side were just like the ones on the other. I kept thinking about Maya Angelou’s famous quote, ‘we are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.’ Why is it so hard for some to understand that we are basically all one and the same?”

This is her raison d’etre, infused in her philanthropic work with the DAR Learning platform, which offers unlimited courses to women across Latin America, and through her involvement with the Children’s Movement of Florida’s “ReadingPals” program, which recruits volunteers to read to young children in pre-kindergarten classrooms and libraries in neighborhoods across the state.

Atencio has been named one of the top young voices in American newsrooms, and her awards include the Peabody Award for Investigative Journalism, the Gracie Award, and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists’ Latino Issues Award. She studied at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Georgetown University, the London School of Economics, and UCLA.

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