About Joanna

Joanna has always loved stories – even from an early age, when the Headteacher complained to her parents that she had read all the books in the school library. Joanna went on to study English at Exeter College, Oxford and later returned to the University to train as a teacher.

After ten years in education, she set up an award-winning poetry gift business. During this time, she wrote thousands of poems to order and her rhyming verse was filmed twice by the BBC.

Unable to resist the lure of the classroom, Joanna recently returned to Oxford University to study creative writing. The Eights is her first novel.

When Joanna isn’t writing…

she is either walking her dog, providing a taxi service for teenagers, or working in the local bookshop. She lives with her family near the Grand Union Canal in Hertfordshire, UK.  

What Joanna is reading

If you’d like to see what Joanna has been reading recently, you can follow her book recommendation page here.

I was lucky enough to hear Tessa Hadley talk recently about her vision for this brilliant novella. Set in post-war Bristol, it features student sisters Evelyn and Moira and the two parties they attend in the company of worldly new friends Paul and Si
An absolute treat of a novel that I purchased in @barnesandnoble when I was in New York last month. It is 1938 and Manod is eighteen. She lives a hand to mouth existence on a remote island off Wales and dreams of going to university. Then two ethnog
Shy Creatures, set in the 1960s tells the story of Helen, an art therapist who is investigating the background of William Tapping, a mute patient who has not left the home he shared with his aunts for decades. Helen, who has been having a long affair
Thank you @thesohoagencyuk for sending me this beautiful and moving novella by @sophiekinsellawriter. I’m not ashamed to say, I cried several times while reading it. The story follows Eve, a writer who, just like Sophie Kinsella, wakes up in ho
I’ve adored Pat Barker’s trilogy about the women of Troy and The Voyage Home was no disappointment. This final volume features slaves Rita, Agamemnon’s war-wife Cassandra, and his Greek wife Clytemnestra who wants revenge for the sa
This stunning novella, recommended by @saracollinsauthor on the last episode of @grahamnortonbooks certainly did not disappoint! Set in 1843, ‘Clear’ tells the story of Ivar, the sole inhabitant of a remote Scottish island, and clergyman
I absolutely LOVED ‘A Little Trickerie’ by Rosanna Pike, which was published last month in hardback. Set in the reign of Henry VII, it is an unputdownable tale of vagrants, lovers, hoaxes, kidnappings, angels, revenge, rooves and redempti
‘Horse’ is a thrilling and cleverly-structured historical novel based on Lexington, the greatest racehorse in American history, his devoted enslaved trainer Jarret, and two academics trying to unpick the mystery of the horse’s life