Gloria Taylor Weinberg is a fourth-generation Floridian who retired from a 22-year career as a journalist with the Fort Pierce Tribune in 2001. She now writes for Indian River Magazine and its subsidiaries, based in Fort Pierce, Florida, where Weinberg has lived for the past 47 years.
Weinberg's debut novel, "A Homicide in Hooker's Point," is set in 1950 and tells a story of life, love and tragedy in a small Southern town. It earned a Royal Palm Literary Award from the Florida Writers Association in 2011 and was the 2015 winner of the North Street Book Prize for literary fiction. Her novella, "Child of Sorrow," was a finalist for a 2013 Royal Palm Literary Award from the FWA. It is based on a true story of a 17-year-old's struggle to survive in a home for unwed mothers and the heart-break of giving up her baby.
During her career as a journalist, Weinberg won numerous awards from the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors and the Florida Society of Professional Journalists. When she retired, Weinberg was the Tribune's Projects Editor. She also wrote a Sunday column and a weekly feature called "Tributes," which told the life stories of recently deceased St. Lucie County residents. These stories celebrated the lives of everyday people who make up the bedrock of a community, rather than its "movers and shakers." The series won the Florida Society of Professional Journalists' first place award for excellence in 2000.
Weinberg's Sunday columns won awards from the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors for four years, from 1996 to 1999. In 2000, she led the team of reporters and editors that earned the FSNE's first place award for explanatory writing for a five-day series of stories on the Indian River Lagoon. The series also took the FSNE's Gold Medal for Public Service and won first place for excellence in in-depth reporting from the Florida Society of Professional Journalists. Weinberg also won media awards of service from The Salvation Army, the Children's Home Society, the Hands of Love Group, the ARC of St. Lucie County, and in 2001, was awarded a Medallion of Excellence from Florida Senator Ken Pruitt.
Before she became a writer, Weinberg spent seven years as a firearms instructor at Indian River Community College Police Academy in Fort Pierce while competing in state and U.S. Regional Police Combat matches. She was the academy's first firearms training coordinator.
She has been married for 29 years to Mark Weinberg, who retired in 2015 after 25 years as the public information officer for the St. Lucie County Sheriff's Office. Mark is a former journalist who worked in print, radio and television. They share their home with Tillie, a rescued King Charles mix with 18 pounds of joy and boundless love.
Weinberg has three grown children and seven grandchildren.
She also paints, and especially loves capturing on canvas the flora, fauna and unique light of her native state.