MARY ELLEN LOEBL will receive the 2018 Arizona Education Association Partners in Education Award. Loebl is coordinator of “Making A Difference Every Day: The Homer Davis Project” for the Jewish Community Relations Council of the JEWISH FEDERATION OF SOUTHERN ARIZONA, which provides weekend food packs and other assistance for elementary school students in need. The award will be presented at the May 12 Salute to Excellence luncheon sponsored by The AEA Foundation for Teaching & Learning at the Scottsdale Resort.
“Rebecca’s Journey Home,” by Brynn O. Sugarman with illustrations by MICHELLE SHAPIRO, graphic designer of the ARIZONA JEWISH POST, was recently chosen as a PJ Library selection. The book won a 2007 Silver Medal Sydney Taylor Award from the Association of Jewish Libraries.
PHYLLIS BRAUN, executive editor of the ARIZONA JEWISH POST, belatedly learned she was the recipient of an Arizona Press Club award. The 2016 awards, announced in June 2017, included second place honors for Braun in the community newspaper headline writing category. The winning headline, “Lebanese, Christian, gay — and fully Israeli” was called straightforward and evocative by contest judge Sara Ziegler, then treasurer of the American Copy Editors Society and deputy features editor for the Omaha World-Herald. Ziegler said the headline “paints a full picture of a complicated person in just six words, and it tells readers of the AJP exactly why they should care.”
Native Seeds/SEARCH honored JANOS WILDER with a multi-course dinner on April 27 to kick off the 2018 Agave Heritage Festival, which runs through May 7. Wilder, who was named the best chef in the Southwest by the James Beard Foundation in 2007, has been a member of the board of Native Seeds/SEARCH for 20 years and its chair for the past three years. His current Tucson enterprises include Downtown Kitchen + Cocktails and The Carriage House, an event space and cooking school.
