Hi there! My name is Lizzie Johnson, and I’m a staff writer at The Washington Post. I previously worked at The San Francisco Chronicle. My first book, Paradise: One Town’s Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire, is about the blaze that leveled the Northern California town of Paradise. It was awarded the the Gold Medal for non-fiction in the 2022 California Book Awards contest and is being developed as a feature film.
I’m a three-time finalist for the Livingston Awards. The California News Publishers Association has recognized me for Best Writing, Best Profile, Best Enterprise, Best Feature and Best Wildfire Feature. In 2021, I won first place in longform feature writing in the Best of the West contest. In 2023, I received the Freedom of the Press Award.
I have appeared on Longform Podcast, This American Life, Longreads, and Climate One from the Commonwealth Club. My work has been featured by the Columbia Journalism Review, the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, and Harvard’s Nieman Storyboard. In 2020, Lauren Markham nicely profiled my wildfire coverage.
Raised in a farming family — soybeans and feed corn — I attended the Missouri School of Journalism. To pay off my student loans, I moonlit as a cycling instructor, a nanny, a caterer, a call center agent and a waitress at a BBQ restaurant, where I was the only vegetarian. I currently live with my husband and our dog in Washington, D.C.
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Consider me a multitool. I can juggle both breaking news and longform projects, locally or abroad.
• An alleged $500 million Ponzi scheme preyed on Mormons. It ended with FBI gunfire.
Winner of the 2023 Freedom of the Press Catalyst Award and the National Press Club President's Award.
• The Evidence Burns Away: As California’s wildfire crisis exploded, the state assigned 30 officers to
follow a suspected arsonist and blend into his community. Could they thwart disaster?
Finalist for the 2021 Livingston Awards and the 2021 Online Journalism Awards
• A Fire’s Unfathomable Toll: The Shepherds followed their dreams to a ridge in Mendocino County. In a flash of
flame, everything changed.
Finalist for the 2020 Livingston Awards
• 150 Minutes of Hell: The inside story of death and survival as the Carr Fire's tornado of flames stormed Redding—
and changed firefighting in a warming California.
Finalist for the 2019 Livingston Awards
• They trusted a coach with their girls and Ivy League ambitions. Now he’s accused of sex abuse.
• Evicted: A girl’s story. As pandemic evictions restrictions end, California families are being forced out of their homes. Bre-Anna Valenzuela just wanted to
keep hers together
• After Prison, the Fight to be a Firefighter.
• Guns are seized in U.S. schools each day. The numbers are soaring.
• Saving Antonio: Can a renowned hospital keep a boy from being shot again?
• Finding Kyle: His leap from the Golden Gate Bridge left Kyle Gamboa’s family grief-stricken and
confused. But in trying to understand his death, they found a way to help others.
• Why the famed Appalachian Trail keeps getting longer — and harder.
• Profit, pain and puppies: Inside the rescue of nearly 4,000 beagles.
• Long Lives Cut Short: When the coronavirus came to San Francisco’s Bayview, it attacked the heart of the historically black neighborhood — the elders.
• She’s 16. The war in Ukraine wrecked her city — and her childhood.
• It was Ukraine’s ‘safe’ city. Then his whole family died.
• When Russian bombs fall on Kharkiv, this man collects the evidence.
• For many Ukrainian artists, fighting Russia in war is tragic last act.
• How a Russian airstrike ripped through people’s lives in Ukraine’s Poltava.
• No air raid sirens on Ukraine’s tallest mountain, just the promise of a future.
• Ukraine marines recount deadly mission to free towns east of Dnieper River.
• Kyiv’s bombed children’s hospital rebuilds, and one boy heads home.
• In Kharkiv, ambulance crews await shelling — and a new year of war.
• Regret Haunts Wine Country Fire Hero.
• Alone and aging on the street.
• The life and death of San Francisco’s fourth coronavirus victim.
• The sky was blue. The day was perfect. One year after the Camp Fire, everything was still gone.
• This was Paradise: ‘How do you quantify everything being gone?’
• Yountville killings shatter a young family.
• Mariposa Lines Up to Salute fallen hero.
• National Spelling Bee rivals: Two kids vie for supremacy after tying last year.
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And outside the newsroom?
I’m a Boston Marathon-qualifying long-distance runner. I’ve climbed some of America’s tallest mountains, trail-ran Rim to Rim to Rim in the Grand Canyon in a single day and backpacked 220 miles down the spine of California’s Sierra Nevada.
I never turn down an adventure.
Want to say hi? I’m at lizzie.johnson@washpost.com.
Photo by Bill O’Leary.