Donna Woolfolk Cross is an American author whose work encompasses historical fiction, language and media criticism. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in English, worked for the London publishing house W. H. Allen and later joined the advertising agency Young & Rubicam in New York. She subsequently earned a master’s degree in literature and writing from the University of California, Los Angeles, and taught writing before becoming a full-time author. Her nonfiction includes Word Abuse, Mediaspeak, Speaking of Words and Daddy’s Little Girl.
Cross is best known for Pope Joan, an international bestselling historical novel based on the medieval legend of a learned woman who disguises herself as a man and rises through the Church hierarchy. Set in ninth-century Europe, the novel incorporates religious conflict, Viking and Saracen attacks, plague, medicine, education and the political world of the Carolingian Empire and medieval Rome. Published in 1996 after several years of research, it was adapted into a 2009 film. Although the historical existence of Pope Joan is widely disputed, Cross uses the legend to examine women’s exclusion from education, religious authority and public power.
