Award-winning journalist and internationally-recognized speaker Donna Jackson Nakazawa began writing at twelve years old, after her father passed away unexpectedly. Recording her thoughts and feelings in a journal helped her to make sense of a world without him. When she came to the last page of her diary, she wrote, “I think I’m going to be a writer.”

Later, in college, she joined the staff of Duke’s literary journal. After graduating, she attended the Radcliffe Publishing Program and found work in the New York magazine world as a science journalist.

She began writing books. To date, she has authored 8 books exploring the connections between emotion, adversity, and well-being. Her mission is to translate complicated science into actionable information for everyday life.

Her bestselling book, Childhood Disrupted, was a finalist for the Books for a Better Life Award. Her newest book, The Adverse Childhood Experiences Guided Journal (foreword by Nedra Glover Tawwab), offers targeted writing techniques to help readers recognize the effects of childhood adversity and reset their brain's internal stories for neurobiological resilience, and is based on Donna’s popular narrative writing-to-heal program, Your Healing Narrative.

Donna’s other books include Girls on the Brink: Helping Our Daughters Thrive in an Era of Increased Anxiety, Depression, and Social Media, named a best book of 2022 by The Washington Post, and The Angel and the Assassin: The Tiny Brain Cell That Changed the Course of Medicine, named a best book of 2020 by Wired.

Her writing has appeared in Wired, The Boston Globe, Stat, and The Washington Post. She has appeared on The Today Show and NPR and is a regular speaker at universities and organizations, including the Child Mind Institute, Harvard Science, UCLA Health, Rutgers, Johns Hopkins, Children’s Hospitals, and the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine. Learn more at donnajacksonnakazawa.com