Judith Valente

Judith Valente covers the religion beat for PBS-TV's national program "Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly." Her reports have also appeared on "The News Hour" on PBS and on Chicago Public Radio and National Public Radio. She has worked as a news producer for WTTW/Chicago and is a former staff writer of "The Washington Post" and "The Wall Street Journal," where in 1992, she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in in the feature writing category. She has won nine broadcast awards and was twice nominated for an Emmy. Valente is a speaker, retreat leader, and the author of two collections of poetry. In 2004, she won the Aldrich Poetry Prize, which was judged by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mary Oliver. She is co-editor of the anthology "Twenty Poems to Nourish Your Soul." She has been a frequent guest on WTTW's weekly program "30 Good Minutes" to talk about monastic wisdom for the modern world. She recently became a Benedictine Oblate. Valente and her husband Judge Charles Reynard live in Chicago and Normal, IL.