Johanna Murphy

Johanna “Joey” Murphy has an M.F.A. in Non-Fiction writing and a B.A. in Philosophy. Shortly after beginning her M.F.A., she was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, or ASD level one at the age of 42, her life began to make a lot more sense to her. She has taught Composition, Seminar in Composition: Engineering, Intro to Non-Fiction and Journalism, and Intro to Creative Writing at the University of Pittsburgh. Now in her 50s, she divides her time between writing, teaching and advocating for greater awareness of the needs of autistic people, especially older women on the autism spectrum as Director of Inclusion Programming for Evolve Coaching, a Pittsburgh-based organization that provides master’s level coaching and support for autistic college students and workforce candidates. She is also part of a working group at the Behavioral Health Center of Excellence and NEXT for Autism. She is the co-author of a chapter on working with autistic people entitled, "Cultural Humility: A Path to Equity," for a textbook edited by the Autism Partnership Foundation that will be published by Springer. She has written about her own autism diagnosis later in life on publicsource.org, and in 2019 her Public Source piece “Women my age weren’t called ‘autistic’ growing up” earned a second-place SPJ Spotlight Award for health and medical reporting.