| Joanna Pearson | |
| Alma Mater: | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars (MFA) Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (MD) |
| Period: | Contemporary |
| Genres: | Mystery fiction Thriller |
| Children: | 2 |
Joanna Pearson is an American novelist, short story writer, poet, and psychiatrist. She published a book of short stories, Every Human Love, in 2019 and a mystery-thriller novel, Bright and Tender Dark, in 2024. Pearson is a recipient of the Donald Justice Poetry Prize and the Drue Heinz Literature Prize.
Pearson grew up in Cleveland County, North Carolina.[1] She was presented to society at the North Carolina Debutante Ball in Raleigh in 1999.[1]
Pearson graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2002.[2] She obtained a master of fine arts degree in poetry from the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars and a medical degree from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.[3]
Her short stories have appeared in The Alaska Quarterly Review, storySouth, Blackbird, Colorado Review, Mississippi Review, Shenandoah, and Joyland.[3] [1] [4] In 2012, she won the Donald Justice Poetry Prize. Her short story Changeling was honored as a distinguished story in The Best American Short Stories in 2015.[3] In May 2019, she published a collection of short stories as a book, titled Every Human Love.[3] In 2021, she was awarded the Drue Heinz Literature Prize.[5] [6] She was nominated for the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize and a Virginia Literary Award. She was the only North Carolinian in South Arts' inaugural class of State Fellows for Literary Arts.[7]
Her debut novel, Bright and Tender Dark, was published by Bloomsbury Press in 2024.[8] The novel is a mystery-thriller work.[9] [10]
Pearson also works as a psychiatrist.[11]
Pearson lives in Carrboro, North Carolina with her husband and two children.[12]