Joanne Leedom-Ackerman

Joanne Leedom-Ackerman (born 1947) is an American novelist, short story writer and journalist whose fiction includes the regional bestseller The Dark Path to the River,^{[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]} and the short story collection No Marble Angels,^[10] She serves as a Vice President of PEN International (2015), and has served as the International Secretary of PEN International and Chair of PEN International’s Writers in Prison Committee.

Education

Joanne Leedom-Ackerman received a BA with honors from Principia College in 1968, an MA in Creative Writing from Johns Hopkins University in 1969 and an MA in English/Creative Writing from Brown University.

Personal life

Joanne Leedom-Ackerman was born Joanne Leedom on February 7, 1947 and grew up in Dallas, Texas, daughter of Joanne Shriver Leedom and John Nesbitt Leedom. Currently based in Washington, DC, Leedom-Ackerman is married to Dr. Peter Ackerman and she is the mother of Dr. Nate Ackerman, a mathematician and former Olympic wrestler and Elliot Ackerman, author and novelist and a decorated former US Marines captain.

Career

Leedom-Ackerman's fiction and literary nonfiction work includes The Dark Path to the River, No Marble Angels, and stories and essays in Short Stories of the Civil Rights Movement, Remembering Arthur Miller, Electric Grace, Snakes: An Anthology of Serpent Tales, Beyond Literacy, Women For All Seasons, Fiction and Poetry by Texas Women, The Bicentennial Collection of Texas Short Stories, and What You Can Do.

Both Leedom-Ackerman’s fiction and her nonfiction focus on international affairs and conflicts.

A former reporter for The Christian Science Monitor,^[11] Leedom-Ackerman’s career now includes work with organizations that serve writers and focus on issues of freedom of expression and human rights as well as on conflict resolution, education, development and refugee issues.

A Vice President of PEN International,^[12] she is the former International Secretary (2004-2007) and former Chair of their Writers in Prison Committee (1993-1997).^[13] Past president of PEN Center USA,^[14] she has served on the board and as Vice President of PEN American Center,^[15][16] and currently serves on the boards of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation,^[17] Poets & Writers,^[18] the International Center for Journalists,^[19] the International Crisis Group, Refugees International^[20] and Words Without Borders^[21][22] and is a member of the ICRW Leadership Council..^[23]

Her work with academic institutions includes service at Johns Hopkins University as a member of the Board of Trustees, as chair of its Academic Affairs Committee, as advisory editor of The Hopkins Review, and as chair of the Advisory Board of the Johns Hopkins University Press.^[24][25] She is a member of Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) Advisory Board. At Brown University, she served on the Board of Trustees^[26] and on the Advisory Board of the Brown Women Writers Project.^[27] She is an emeritus trustee of both universities.

Leedom-Ackerman is an emeritus Director of Human Rights Watch^[28] where she chaired the Asia Advisory Board.^[29] She has served on the Board of Trustees of Save the Children and on Save the Children’s Advisory Board on Global Education. She has served on boards of the Albert Einstein Institution and the Advisory Boards of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, the International Center for Research on Women and 100 Reporters.

She is a member of the Chairman’s Advisory Council of the United States Institute of Peace,^[30] and she was an advisor for the Emmy-nominated PBS documentary A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict, which aired in two parts in September 2000.

She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations,^[31] PEN American Center, PEN USA, English PEN, the Authors Guild and the Texas Institute of Letters.

Leedom-Ackerman has also taught creative writing at Empire State College of State University of New York, Lehman College of City University of New York, New York University, Occidental College and The University of California at Los Angeles Extension.

Selected bibliography

Books

• The Dark Path to The River, Saybrook/Norton, 1988,
• No Marble Angels, Saybrook/Norton, 1987

Short stories

• "The Arc of My Mother’s Life" in Electric Grace: Still More Fiction by Washington Area Women, edited by Richard Peabody, Paycock Press, fall, 2007
• "The Beginning of Violence" in Short Stories of the Civil Rights Movement: An Anthology, edited by Margaret Earley Whitt, University of Georgia Press, 2006
• "Tutorica/The Tutor H.D.P.", Zabreb, 2006.
• "Remembering Arthur Miller", (essay) edited Christopher Bigsby, London: Methuen, 2005
• "The Child and the Snake" in Snakes: An Anthology of Serpent Tales, edited by Willee Lewis. New York: M. Evans, 2003
• "The Art of Writing Novels" in Beyond Literacy, edited by R. Patton Howell, Saybrook/Norton, 1989
• "The Tutor" in Fiction and Poetry by Texas Women, edited by Janice L. White, The Texas Center for Writers Press, 1975
• "Death Stalks A Building Once It Enters" in The Bicentennial Collection of Texas Short Stories, edited by James P. White, The Texas Center for Writers Press, 1974
• "Juror’s essay" in Women for all Seasons, Women's Building, 1988; edited by Joanne Leedom-Ackerman and Wanda Coleman.
• "Race Relations" in What You Can Do: Practical Suggestions For Action on Some Major Problems of the Seventies, David McKay & Co, 1971

Articles:

• “In Qatar, calls for release of prisoners come with the start of Ramadan,” GlobalPost, July 1, 2014
• “Tunisia could be the first Arab Spring success. But it's not there yet.” The Christian Science Monitor, May 27, 2014
• “The start of winter brings new dangers for Syrian refugees in Jordan,” GlobalPost, December 4, 2013

“Qatar: A poet sits in a desert cell for reciting his work at home,” GlobalPost, November 1, 2013

• “Africa of the Mind: Friends Real and Imagined,” Africa.com, April 2, 2012
• “Worlds Apart,” The Christian Science Monitor, March 13, 2012
• “Mockingbirds at Fort McHenry: Tribute to Elliott Coleman,” The Fortnightly Review', June 23, 2011
• “Stranded in Casablanca, Out and About in Tangiers,” Africa.com, April 28, 2010
• “Yellow Geranium in a Tin Can,” From the November/December 2009 Issue of World Literature Today as the Introduction to the Special Feature, “Voices *Against the Darkness: Imprisoned Writers Who Could Not Be Silenced,” October 27, 2009
• “On its 60th anniversary, China is still crushing freedom,” The Christian Science Monitor, October 1, 2009
• “Turkey can avert a tragedy on the Tigris,” The Christian Science Monitor, August 26, 2009
• “Portal to Antiquity-Hasankeyf, Turkey,” World Literature Today, July–August 2009.
• “The intensifying battle over Internet freedom,” The Christian Science Monitor, February 24, 2009
• “The Role of PEN in the Contemporary World,” PEN International magazine, Vol. 56. No. 2, 2006
• “El Papel de PEN en el mundo contemoraneo,” Periplo, Mexico, June, 2007
• “Exorcising the Ghosts of a Nation,” The Los Angeles Times, (Sunday Opinion section), July 6, 2003
• “Iraq’s Future: Soccer Balls?” The Christian Science Monitor, June 23, 2003.
• “Status: The Kosovo Issue That Just Won’t Go Away,” The Los Angeles Times, (Sunday Opinion section) March 4, 2001.
• “New Hope in Turkey,” The Christian Science Monitor, November 18, 1999
• “Resurrecting Literature Online,” Brown University, October 26, 1999 (http://www.wwp-brown.edu/texts/forewordJLA.html)
• “Writers Behind Bars: PEN Writers in Prison” in AWP Chronicle (Associated Writing Programs) Vol. 30, No. 6, May/Summer 1998
• “Words: the Weapons of the Mind” in Kontakt Magazine (Denmark), Fall, 1996

References

External links

• Official website
• http://bulletin.brown.edu/leadership/
• http://trustees.jhu.edu/members
• https://www.press.jhu.edu/about/advisory_board.html
• https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/joanne-leedom-ackerman/the-dark-path-to-the-river/