Joan Dempsey

WINNER, 2017 POETS & WRITERS MAUREEN EGEN WRITERS EXCHANGE AWARD

New England native Joan Dempsey, author of the novel, This Is How It Begins, received her MFA degree and teaching certificate in creative writing from Antioch University, Los Angeles.

She was the recipient of a significant research grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation for her work on This Is How It Begins, a grant that took her to Warsaw for a month (no, she doesn't speak Polish), and to Washington, D.C. for ten days, to study in the archives at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Her writing has been published in The Adirondack Review, Alligator Juniper, Obsidian: Literature of the African Diaspora, and Plenitude Magazine, and aired on National Public Radio.

She lives in New Gloucester, Maine with her partner and their family of animals.