Margaret Engel

Margaret Engel is a journalist, playwright and author in Washington, D.C. She is director of the Alicia Patterson Foundation, a nonprofit in its fifth decade of giving grants to reporters, editors and photographers. Engel also served as the managing editor of the Newseum.

She is a graduate of the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism and was a Nieman fellow at Harvard University, where she studied law and worker health issues. She was an award-winning reporter for the Washington Post, Des Moines Register, and Lorain (Ohio) Journal. She is a board member for the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards and is a board member for Spotlight DC. She is a longtime member of Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE).

Engel and her twin sister, Allison, wrote the plays "Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins," "Erma Bombeck: At Wit’s End" and "The Vote: The Miracle Win in Just 72 Years." They also wrote three editions of "Food Finds: America’s Best Local Foods and the People Who Produce Them," which became a long-running show, “Food Finds,” on The Food Network. 

She, her husband and two children wrote three Fodor’s guidebooks on America’s baseball parks, "Baseball Vacations," visiting more than 200 ballparks. She also has written for Bethesda Magazine, the Washington Post and other outlets.