About Joanna

A love of books awakened an inner author, crafting what will become timeless stories.

My Story

Joanna’s love of books started when she was a child and she read prolifically. This led to studying English and eventually becoming an English teacher. As part of these studies, Joanna attended Eastern Michigan University where she studied American literature, leading to a fascination with F Scott Fitzgerald and a subsequent dissertation about his novels. She also studied for a year at the University of Oxford looking into the area of sex-sterotyping in children’s fiction and produced a dissertation and various publications about this issue.

Joanna has travelled extensively and has kept journals of some of her trips around the world. More recently she began to write blogs for ForCrohns, a charity she was involved in, now sadly no longer operational. She raised thousands of pounds for the charity to fund research into Crohns Disease, which she has suffered with since her mid-twenties, organising fund raising events and undertaking challenges in different parts of the world.  She wrote these blogs with the intention of encouraging and inspiring people with disabilities to believe that it is still possible to travel to remote locations. An edited version of one of her blogs was published recently in a magazine summarised recently in a magazine “Disruptive Authors”.

Joanna O'Donoghue
Writer and Speaker

Personal Life

Joanna taught English in a school in South Oxfordshire for ten years and she is still in touch with some of her past students, having organised two reunions in recent years. She has always loved encouraging children to write creatively and has been asked to be part of a project in August doing just this in a summer school for children facing challenges in their lives.

Joanna then moved on to a long career working in different capacities with children with special educational needs and in particular those students with challenging behaviour. She strived to engender in these children, a love for reading and writing, even with those who were particularly challenged in these areas.

recognition

Attendee of King Charles' Garden Party 2023

Jo also became a respite foster carer and her contribution and service was rewarded this year, as she was nominated to attend the King’s garden party at Buckingham Palace. This was in recognition of her work over many years with children and young people.

In 2022 Joanna decided to record the experiences of people she had met around the world which resulted in the publication of her first book, Lockdown Stories. Plans for her next book are in progress. More information to follow…

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Keep up to date with Jo's latest work and travels