Award Winning Author Visits SPCHS Classroom

Some SPCHS students were fortunate enough to get a visit from Johnnie Bernhard.

A former English teacher and journalist, Johnnie Bernhard is passionate about reading and writing. A published author, her work has appeared in newspapers and magazines, both nationally and internationally. She has written articles and columns for: the Suburban Reporter of Houston, World Oil Magazine, The Mississippi Press, the international Word Among Us, Heart of Ann Arbor Magazine, Houston Style Magazine, and the Cowbird-NPR production on small town America.  Johnnie’s entry for Cowbird, “The Last Mayberry” received 7,500 views, nationally and internationally.

A Good Girl is  published by Texas Review Press.   The Historical Fiction novel was shortlisted in the 2015 Faulkner-Wisdom Literary Prize, one of America’s most prestigious literary prizes. The novel was selected for panel discussion at the 2017 Mississippi and Louisiana Book Festivals, as well as represented at the 2017 Texas Book Festival.  It is a finalist in the 2017 national Kindle Book Awards, a nominee for the Bingham Prize, a 2018 nominee for the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award in Fiction, and shortlisted for the 2017 Texas Literary Review, Bloggers’ Choice Award for Literary Fiction.

Johnnie’s second novel, ​How We Came to Be is a finalist in the 2017 Faulkner-Wisdom Literary Prize, and a novel for panel discussion at the 2018 Louisiana and Mississippi Book Festivals.  It was represented at the 2018 Texas Book Festival by Texas A&M University Press, the Texas Book Consortium, and Texas Review Press.  Named a “Must Read” by ​Southern Writers Magazine in its March 2018 issue, it is also recognized by ​Deep South Magazine ​in its 2018 Summer Reading List and by the international Pulpwood Queen Book Club as a 2019 reading selection.