Joan F. Smith is an award-winning novelist, essayist, and dance instructor from Massachusetts. She is obsessed with humor, unanswerable questions, and the intersection between truth and lies. Joan does her best writing on airplanes, and her worst with no caffeine. She studied creative writing and social science at Providence College and received her MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College. When she isn’t writing, Joan teaches dance, travels, exercises, works in higher ed, mentors writers, and wrangles her kids. She is the author of the forthcoming young adult novel The Half Orphan's Handbook, coming from Macmillan/Imprint in Winter 2021. Her writing has appeared in various publications such as The Washington Post and Boston Literary Magazine. She lives in the Boston area with her husband and kids, where her daily requirement as a parent includes dance parties in the kitchen. You can find more about her at joanfsmithbooks.com, and follow her on Twitter and Instagram @jf_smit.

Photo Credit: Sharona Jacobs