2019 PWT Conference Speakers

Ashley Brown

Ashley Brown is a professor, editor and author. She teaches distance-learning courses in the College of Professional and Continuing Studies at the University of Oklahoma.

She authored "Letters to a Daughter I'll Never Have," a collection of letters to her imaginary daughter where she navigates the gut-wrenching territory of making the decision to opt out of parenthood. She and her husband Nathan live in Wimberley, Texas.

Nathan Brown

Nathan Brown is an author, singer-songwriter, photographer, and award-winning poet who served as the Poet Laureate of Oklahoma for 2013 and 2014. He taught at the University of Oklahoma for seventeen years.

His performances of poetry have been likened to musical concerts, and he now makes a good part of his living from house concerts and live shows that combine songs and poems. He and his wife Ashley live in Wimberley, Texas.

Andrew Church

Andrew Church served in the United States Navy as a media correspondent aboard USS Wasp. He was awarded the Navy Meritorious Unit Commendation Medal in 2011 and the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal in 2013.

He joined the Baylor Journalism graduate school in 2017, and became an adjunct lecturer in 2018. Andrew produces "Tiny Texas," short films about the people and communities of Texas small towns.

Julie Copenhaver

Julie Copenhaver is a full-time traveler, photographer and speaker with a background in multi-media production, marketing, and journalism. In 2017 she quit her marketing job at Baylor University to to travel the world by herself, documenting her journey across four continents and most of the United States.

During her seven years at Baylor, Julie was the Online Marketing Manager for the Baylor Alumni Association and the Baylor Line Magazine, and later became the Marketing Director for Baylor's Office of Career and Professional Development.

Claire St. Amant

Claire St. Amant is an Emmy-nominated Field Producer who has worked for CBS News “48 Hours” since 2014. She has covered an ambush on police officers in Dallas, a serial killer in South Carolina, and a murder-for-hire sting on two doctors in Houston.

Named one of Editor & Publisher’s 25 Under 35 in 2012, Claire St. Amant has written for CBS News, the Wall Street Journal, Houston Chronicle and D Magazine. She has earned many writing accolades, including two Dallas Bar Association Stephen Philbin Awards for excellence in legal reporting.