Photographer / Video Journalist
Born in Bayonne, N.J. and raised in Royal Oak, photographer Donna Terek -- nicknamed "Turk" -- lives and works in the city of Detroit. Once upon a time she worked the graveyard shift in a GM bearing plant, put those tiny brushes in nail polish bottles for L'Oreal, taught English in Greece, night-staffed in a home for developmentally disabled adults, collected loans for a bank, served cocktails in Omaha, ran a phone bank in Atlanta, taught high school in rural Minnesota and bummed on a beach in Mexico where the locals claim to have invented surfing.
Terek was tolerated as a token hippie at Miami University and got her M.A. in journalism at the University of Minnesota. Today she lives with her husband and two dogs, C.C. Ryder and S.O. Terek, in one of Detroit's historic neighborhoods.
"Donna's Detroit" was named best online column by the Society of Professional Journalists in 2010 and by the National Society of Newspaper Columnists in 2009, the column's first year.