Joanna Pearson’s debut novel, Bright and Tender Dark, was recently published by Bloomsbury and is an Indie Next Pick and an Amazon Editor's Pick. Her second story collection, Now You Know It All (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021), was chosen by Edward P. Jones for the 2021 Drue Heinz Literature Prize and named a finalist for the Virginia Literary Awards. Her first story collection, Every Human Love (Acre Books, 2019) was a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Awards, the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for Fiction, and the Foreword INDIES Awards.
Her stories have appeared in The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Mystery and Suspense, The Best Small Fictions, Best of the Net, and many other places. Joanna has received fellowships as a fiction writer from VCCA, South Arts, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the North Carolina Arts Council/Durham Arts Council. She holds an M.F.A. in poetry from the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars and an M.D. from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Originally from western North Carolina, she now lives with her husband and two daughters near Chapel Hill, where she works as a psychiatrist.
At MacDowell, Pearson worked toward completing her third story collection as well as on the beginnings of a second novel.
Portrait by Danell Beede
