Joanne Leedom-Ackerman

Joanne Leedom-Ackerman is a novelist, short story writer, and journalist. Her works of fiction include regional bestseller The Dark Path to the River and No Marble Angels, and forthcoming novels Burning Distance and the The Far Side of the Desert. Her nonfiction book PEN Journeys: Memoir of Literature on the Line was recently published, and she is the senior editor and contributor to The Journey of Liu Xiaobo: From Dark Horse to Nobel Laureate. She has also published fiction and essays in books and anthologies, including Short Stories of the Civil Rights Movement; Remembering Arthur Miller; Snakes: An Anthology of Serpent Tales, Fiction and Poetry by Texas Women, the Bicentennial Collection of Texas Short Stories and Beyond Literacy.

A reporter for The Christian Science Monitor early in her career, Joanne has won awards for her nonfiction and published hundreds of articles in newspapers and magazines, including World Literature Today, The Christian Science Monitor, The Los Angeles Times, GlobalPost, and others.

Joanne is a Vice President Emeritus of PEN International and the former International Secretary of PEN International and former Chair of PEN’s International Writers in Prison Committee. Past president of PEN Center USA, she has also served as a Vice President and board member of PEN America and the PEN/Faulkner Foundation. She serves as board member of the American Writers Museum, the International Center for Journalists, Words Without Borders, and Refugees International and is a member of the Advisory Board of the Edward R. Murrow Center at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and the ICRW Leadership Council. She is a former board member of the International Crisis Group and Save the Children, an emeritus board member of Human Rights Watch and Poets and Writers, and an emeritus trustee of Brown University and Johns Hopkins University.

A member of the Advisory Board of the United States Institute of Peace, Joanne was an adviser on the Emmy-nominated PBS documentary A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Texas Institute of Letters and American and English PEN.

Joanne has taught writing at New York University, City University of New York, Occidental College and the University of California at Los Angeles extension. She holds Master of Arts degrees from Brown University and Johns Hopkins University and graduated with honors from Principia College.

Joanne is married and has two sons.