Crafty Cami is the second book in a series of stories author and journalist Wendi Redman made up for her own two girls

An Emmy Award-nominated journalist originally from Prince Rupert has published another children’s book.

Wendi Redman was born and raised in Prince Rupert before moving to the States in 2000 after graduating high school. She published her first book, JoJo Go-Go, last November and has just released her second earlier this month, entitled Crafty Cami. Both are named after her two daughters, Jolie and Camelia.

Redman attended Annunciation Elementary and Prince Rupert Secondary schools, and was an active kid growing up. She was involved in dance, ballet and volleyball, and loved performing despite being “very shy.”

Writing became a big part of Redman’s life during high school when she wrote a biweekly column for the Prince Rupert Daily News, highlighting what was happening around school. After she graduated, she moved to Baltimore, Maryland to attend Goucher College, but she had no clue what she wanted to major in.

“While selecting my first semester of classes, my mom convinced me to humour her and take a communications class,” Redman recalled. “In that first communications class, I realized I was going to be a news anchor.”

Redman told a few people about her desire to become a news anchor, but she recalled that they all told her that she did not have the right look or personality for the job.

“My family was very supportive, so I didn’t worry too much about what others thought,” she said. “I just stopped telling people.”

After being too shy to take a speech class in college, Redman studied abroad for a semester at the Sorbonne, University of France, in Paris. Upon her return to Baltimore, she interned at WBFF, a FOX affiliate, as a production assistant, where an anchor asked her what she wanted to do. 

“I told him I wanted to do what he does,” she said. “He was the first person, other than my family, to encourage me to go for it.”

After graduating in 2004 with a communications degree and a French degree with a double concentration in French literature and French civilization, Redman has worked as a television news anchor for various CBS and ABC affiliates across the United States—fulfilling the goal she set for herself in her very first communications class in university.

Her first live on-air role was at TV3 in Winchester, Virginia as a weekend anchor and reporter, and she was quickly promoted to be be the main evening anchor. Redman recalled being nervous before going on live for the very first time.

“My first time live in studio, I thought my heart was going to explode,” Redman said. “But, I had to fight through my shyness to get through it—each time it got a little easier.”

Redman also worked in South Carolina, where she met her husband, James Loftus, who proposed to her live on air. She followed him as he pursued his career goal of becoming a general manager of a television station, and worked jobs in California, Georgia and Arizona before settling in Seattle, Washington, where she spent more time at home with her two daughters.

In 2016, Redman was nominated for a Southeast Emmy Award for a health and science segment she did called “The Gynechiatrist” for CBS affiliate WTOC TV in Savannah Georgia. Other notable moments in her career include:


First live report in the field as a reporter, which was the Virginia Tech Massacre
Anchoring and reporting live from the Masters in Augusta, Georgia
Anchoring wall-to-wall coverage during Hurricane Matthew in Savannah
Appearing in an episode of ABC’s 20/20 for her coverage of the Murdaugh family murders
One-on-one interviews with Nikki Haley, Newt Gingrich, Tim Kaine and Gilbert Gottfried
Flying with the US Thunderbirds
JoJo Go-Go and Crafty Cami having number one and two new releases, respectively, on Amazon in the Children’s Art Fiction category

While she was spending more time at home with six-year-old Jolie and four-year-old Camelia, Redman started to write stories for them on her phone, as she is a writer and storyteller at heart and was missing that creative outlet.

“They started asking for these stories all the time, and they’re a tough audience, so I started thinking it would be neat if these stories were actual books they could hold and have forever,” she recalled. “While researching how to do this, I started to come to the conclusion that it might make sense to self-publish.”

Redman needed an illustrator for her books but had concerns about hiring someone random from online. As though her message had been heard from afar, her daughters’ former nanny from Arizona, Elisabeth Wilder, got in touch shortly after to tell Redman how she had just self-published her own novella. After Redman shared her children’s book idea with her, Wilder was on board right away, as it was her dream to become a children’s book illustrator, Redman recalled.

They teamed up for Redman’s first book, JoJo Go-Go, which led to Redman creating her own small business—a publishing company called Lofty Pen Publishing LLC.

JoJo Go-Go is about a young girl with too much energy and her mom, who has to figure out how to keep her busy. It was released in November 2024.

Redman’s newest book, Crafty Cami, is about a young girl who loves art but colours on all the wrong things while her dad desperately tries to teach her the right ways to colour. It was released earlier this month.

Since January this year, Redman has been working part-time as an evening anchor and investigative reporter for ABC affiliate Apple Valley News Now in Tri-Cities, Washington.

She has written over 20 books for kids aged one through six, and hopes more will be published in the future, but is currently enjoying her latest book release with her two daughters and husband. 

Both JoJo Go-Go and Crafty Cami are available on Amazon.