When Joan was
twenty, she moved to Rio Blanco, Belize, with her first husband, an
anthropologist. She taught reading and writing but not much arithmetic
(never her best subject) to 35 kids in a one-room school house. "Teacher's"
house looked like everybody else's--a dirt floor, thatched roof, plank
siding held together by tie-tie vines, and a stove made out of river rocks.
The stove had a single burner, designed from an old machete blade. This was
Joan's introduction to cooking. Julia Child was unavailable for advice. So
was Martha Stewart.
The one-room school house was Joan's introduction to standing on the other
side of the desk. Never again would teaching offer the same challenges, or
be as much fun.
Joan's first short story came out in Transatlantic Review. Since
then, her short fiction has appeared in the Southern California
Anthology, Other Voices, Aethlon, Confrontation, North Dakota Quarterly,
etc., and has been anthologized in Blue Cathedral: Short Fiction for the
New Millennium (Red Hen Press 2000). "Baggage" came
out in Tales of the Green Jackalope (Round-Peg-Square-Hole Press) in
2003.
The setting for Joan's stories is usually California, but she has set other
stories on the East Coast and in Belize. Horses frequently put in a guest
appearance.
When Joan was
twenty, she moved to Rio Blanco, Belize, with her first husband, an
anthropologist. She taught reading and writing but not much arithmetic
(never her best subject) to 35 kids in a one-room school house. "Teacher's"
house looked like everybody else's--a dirt floor, thatched roof, plank
siding held together by tie-tie vines, and a stove made out of river rocks.
The stove had a single burner, designed from an old machete blade. This was
Joan's introduction to cooking. Julia Child was unavailable for advice. So
was Martha Stewart. 
