LITERATURE + LECTURES

Thursday, November 3 at 7:00pm, Blue Willow Bookshop presents Donna Johnson.  Donna Johnson will discuss and sign her new book, Holy Ghost Girl: A Memoir.

When Donna M. Johnson was three years old, her mother became the organist for David Terrell, a hugely popular Texas tent preacher whose ministries in the 1960s and 1970s circled the globe. Until the media dynasties of Billy Graham, Oral Roberts, Jerry Falwell and those who followed would forever change the landscape of evangelicalism, Brother Terrell ruled the roost. He was one of the last of the great sawdust trail evangelists whose storied tradition traced back to Billy Sunday. In town after town, Terrell enthralled—and healed—thousands a night, speaking the word of God for hours at a stretch beneath the biggest gospel tent in the world.

Holy Ghost Girl: A Memoir recounts the rise and fall of Brother Terrell from southern folk hero who was beaten by Klansmen for seating blacks and whites together, to womanizing end-time prophet who fathered children with more than one woman outside his marriage, including Donna’s mother. Holy Ghost Girl bypasses easy judgment of Terrell and his followers to articulate a rich and a mystical world rendered with the wry observations and details only a kid would notice.

Donna M. Johnson grew up calling evangelical minister David Terrell “Daddy.” She left his ministry for good at the age of seventeen and has not returned since. She has written about religion for the Dallas Morning News and the Austin American Statesman. With her husband, she owns and operates Bazzirk Inc, a marketing and advertising firm that runs marketing programs around the world. She was awarded a writing residency by the Ragdale Foundation (Lake Forest, IL) in Spring 2009 and won the Mayborn Creative Nonfiction Prize for this manuscript in progress in 2007. She lives in Austin and is active in the local writing community.