Natalie Jacobsen, moderator and co-lead of the Member-Author Team, is a director of marking & communications at Airlink. After graduating from the University of Oregon Journalism School, she lived and worked in media and correspondence in Japan, and later in Charlottesville, Virginia, where she reported on the events surrounding the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally. She leads writing workshops throughout Northern Virginia and Washington for aspiring authors.
Authors to showcase their WWII books at Member-Author Team panel on July 31
The Member-Author Team plans to hold a panel discussion featuring National Press Club authors who have written about World War II on Thursday, July 31, in the Reliable Source’s Cosgrove Lounge.
A self-funded dinner from the Reliable Source begins at 5:30 p.m. for in-person attendees, with the program starting at 6:15 p.m. for both in-person and virtual participants. A question-and-answer session with participants follows the moderated discussion. RSVP is required.
Each author brings their own expertise on WWII. The panel expects to engage in a discussion on writing and researching the topic, the importance of storytelling and preserving historical voices, as well as insights on parallels that they see throughout history and into modern day.
Jody Beck is the author of Your Loving Son Ty: A World War II Story of Hope and Horror in the Pacific. Beck was a reporter for the Washington Star, an assignment manager for WRC-TV (NBC-4), taught journalism at the University of Maryland-College Park, and was the director of the Scripps Howard Foundation’s Semester in Washington internship program. She earned a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a master’s degree from the University of Maryland-College Park, both in journalism.
Lucy Colback is a journalist, conference speaker and aspiring author. She has written financial commentary for the Financial Times’ Lex column as well as features for FT publications including the FT Weekend. She left FT in 2017 to travel the world interviewing WWII survivors and is currently compiling a book of their stories. Prior to becoming a journalist, she worked in finance, focusing on Asian equities in roles including equity research sales and as an analyst and investor for companies such as Schroders and Merrill Lynch. She has had a long association with China and the Asian region. She studied Chinese at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom and a master’s in Chinese studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, focusing on politics and economics. For her work she travelled frequently to Taiwan, South Korea, China and Southeast Asia. She has lived and worked in London, New York, Singapore and Hong Kong, where she currently resides.
Noël-Marie Fletcher is the author of the award-winning Reporting the Nuremberg Trials: How Journalists Covered Live Nazi Trials & Executions. She started her journalism career in California and moved to Hong Kong where she covered the High Court for the Hong Kong Standard newspaper. She became a foreign correspondent for the Journal of Commerce and travelled throughout Asia before being posted to Beijing as China correspondent. She is a founding member of the Foreign Correspondents' Club of China in the PRC and has written extensively for newspapers, magazines and wire services. In 2017, she wrote briefly in Berlin for The Times (London) before returning to the U.S. to cover business and government in D.C. Reporting the Nuremberg Trials won two 2025 book award from the National Federation of Press Women.