Donna M. Johnson is the author of Holy Ghost Girl, a memoir critically acclaimed by the New York Times, O Magazine, Texas Monthly, Beliefnet, NPR's "Interfaith Voices," People - and many others. The book was named twice to the "Oprah.com Memoirs We Love" list and was chosen by Publishers Weekly as a Top 10 Pick. Holy Ghost Girl took top honors in the spirituality category at the New York Books for a Better Life Awards and won the Mayborn Creative Nonfiction prize. Donna is a 2009 Ragdale Fellow and was recently awarded a three-year Lucas Artist Residency at the Montalvo Center for the Arts in Saratoga, California.

Donna's work has been collected in two anthologies, Beyond Belief: The Secret Lives of Women in Extreme Religions (2013) and Her Texas: Story, Image, Poem & Song (2015). She's written about religion, family and culture for The Dallas Morning News, the Austin American-Statesman, Psychology Today and the Huffington Post.. Donna lives in Austin, where she teaches writing workshops and is working on a project that combines investigative journalism with personal narrative. Her husband, the writer Kirk Wilson, was recently named a National Endowment for the Arts recipient for 2018.

The Werlin Lecture is part of the annual Press Women of Texas meeting and is sponsored in part by the Baylor Department of Journalism, Public Relations, and New Media and the Baylor Libraries. For more information about Press Women of Texas or to attend the annual meeting, please visit presswomenoftexas.org. Additional publicity materials for the Werlin Lecture are available here.