Donna Jackson Nakazawa

Donna Jackson Nakazawa
Photo Copyright © Marshall Clarke

Donna Jackson Nakazawa is an award-winning journalist and internationally-recognized speaker whose work explores the neuroscience of the mind-body connection and human emotion. 

Her latest book, Girls on the Brink: Helping Our Daughters Thrive in an Era of Increased Anxiety, Depression, and Social Media (Random House/Harmony) was named one of the best health books of 2022 by The Washington Post and Mashable. 

Donna is also the author of six previous books, including The Angel and The Assassin: The Tiny Brain Cell That Changed the Course of Medicine (Random House/Ballantine), named one of the best books of 2020 by WIRED. It illuminates recent groundbreaking discoveries that elucidate the biological link between our physical and mental health. Hailed as “riveting,” “stunning,” and “visionary,” The Angel and the Assassin offers us a radically reconceived picture of human health.

Her book Childhood Disrupted: How Your Biography Becomes Your Biology, and How You Can Heal (Atria / Simon & Schuster, 2015) was a finalist for the 2015 Books for a Better Life Award. She is also the author of The Last Best Cure (Hudson Street Press / Penguin, 2013), The Autoimmune Epidemic (Touchstone / Simon & Schuster, 2009), and Does Anybody Else Look Like Me? A Parent’s Guide to Raising Multicultural Children (Perseus, 2003).

Her writing has been published in Wired, The Boston Globe, Stat, The Washington Post, Health Affairs, Aeon, More, Parenting, AARP Magazine, Glamour, and elsewhere. For her reporting on health-science, Donna received the AESKU lifetime achievement award and the National Health Information Award. She has appeared on The Today Show, National Public Radio, NBC News, and ABC News.

In addition to her work as a science journalist, Donna has been a speaker at numerous universities, conferences and medical centers, including the Child Mind Institute, the Harvard Division of Science Library Series, Children’s Hospitals Association, the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine, the University of Arizona, Rutgers , Learning and the Brain, the Royal Society of Medicine, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, and the International Congress on Autoimmunity. She also speaks at schools nationwide.

Donna is also the creator and founder of the narrative writing-to-heal programs, Your Healing Narrative, and Breaking Free From Traumawhich use the process of Neural Re-Narrating™ to help participants recognize and override the brain’s old thought patterns and internalized stories, and create a new, inner healing narrative that calms body, brain, and nervous system. She has taught this trauma-healing course to thousands of individuals, parents, health care workers, physicians, and educators. She is also the creator of the parenting course, Growing Strong Girls.

Donna has been the recipient of writing-in-residence fellowships at the Corporation of Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She received her Bachelor of Arts from Duke University and is a graduate of the Radcliffe Publishing Procedures Program.

She lives with her family in Maryland.

Learn more about Donna’s Speaking Events and Lectures

Donna Jackson Nakazawa

author of The Angel and the Assassin and Childhood Disrupted

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Author photo copyright © Marshall Clarke
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