NAGBW Announces 2025 Diversity in Beer Writing Grant Recipients

The North American Guild of Beer Writers has selected five journalists to receive a Diversity in Beer Writing Grant for 2025. Now in its eighth year, the grant supports stories that showcase diversity and inclusion—in all its forms and challenges—within beer.

The Grant receives support from CraftBeer.com, a website published by the Brewers Association; and Allagash Brewing Company. These pieces will be published at craftbeer.com:

Brenda Marshall
Michigan is the largest hop-growing state outside of the Pacific Northwest, and on family farms in the Leelanau Peninsula and in research fields at Michigan State University, women are sowing the seeds of innovation and equity. As the brewing industry continues to reckon with its diversity gap, so too does agriculture. This article highlights the lives and work of Michigan’s women hop farmers.


Vanessa K. De Luca
The Black women farmers who supply barley and other locally grown produce to breweries are part of a long history of Black women who have significantly helped shape sustainable agriculture, farming innovations, and food justice movements in America. This article will highlight the Black women at the intersection of brewing and agriculture, and the systemic barriers that they are triumphing over.


Noelle Phillips
In Canada’s thriving craft beer industry, there’s strong Indigenous participation, but Canada’s painful legacy of colonialism—felt through the Indian Residential Schools, the Indian Act, and many other acts of brutality—has subjected Indigenous communities to generational trauma that continues to this day. This article will explore Canadian craft breweries owned or co-owned by Indigenous people and look at how beer can be an opportunity for connection and recognition.


Frances Tietje-Wang
Tattooing and brewing share historical intersections with symbolism, craftsmanship, and communal identity. This article explores these connections, from the Makushi tribe in Guyana, whose kansku tattoos were believed to give brewers a special edge in crafting their cassava beer, to the the Ainu people of Japan, whose hearth goddesses oversaw both tattoos and brewing.


Maria Judnick
While Western European influences on beer are widely celebrated, Eastern European immigrants, including Slovene Americans, are a lesser-known part of West Coast beer history. This article will tell their story, from steel mills to beer factory floors, how they provided beer for the American forces during the Vietnam War, and the ways that beer changed their lives for the better.

Previous Stories
Familiarize yourself with past stories to understand the kind of reporting that has come from the Diversity in Beer Writing Grant:

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