about the author

Joanna Suzanne Lee grew up in a small Virginia town nestled in the picturesque Shenandoah Valley and has been writing since she was very young; her first poem was published in a local newspaper at the tender age of 7.  She insists that her love of words and penchant for exquisite grammatical renderings come from her mother, who taught English for many years.

Her writing won prizes all through grade school, but in the years that followed, Joanna’s perverse (or diverse, whichever the reader prefers) nature led her away from literary pursuits and toward the sciences.  After obtaining a degree in biochemistry at the age of 23, she went on to medical school, graduating as an M.D. in 2007.  The journey was not creatively barren, however; an entire section of her first book, the somersaults I did as I fell, was inspired by the intimate experiences she had with life and death while on clinical rotations.

Currently a doctoral student in neuroscience, Joanna divides her time between analytical data-gathering and her first love of writing.  Apart from promotion of her latest project, somersaults, she also maintains her ongoing poetry site The Tenth Muse, updated with recent pieces on a (semi-)regular basis.