Profile of Joanne Merriam

Joanne Merriam was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada in 1973. A graduate in English and Mathematics from Dalhousie University, she has worked as a courier dispatcher, telemarketer, charity fundraiser, sheet music librarian, web designer and office administrator. In 2001, she quit her job as the Executive Assistant of the Writers' Federation of Nova Scotia to travel Canada by train, and then much of the Northeastern and Southern United States with her husband Alan Slone. She lives in Concord, NH.

Her mainstream writing has appeared in Alba, The Amethyst Review, andwerve, The Antigonish Review, Big Toe Review, Canadian Literature, Contemporary Verse 2, Dandelion, Event, Feux chalins, The Fiddlehead, flashquake, Grain, Litwit Review, Maquette Magazine, Orbis Quarterly international, Pottersfield Portfolio, Prairie Journal, Prosodia, Room of One's Own, Quarry, Vallum Contemporary Poetry and the anthologies Ice: new writing on hockey, Reactions 4 and To Find Us: Words and Images of Halifax. Her speculative writing is listed below.

• "The Boatman." On Spec, forthcoming.
• "Harvest." Strange Horizons, forthcoming.
• "Nobody's That Good All the Time." Reprinted from the magazine, in Southern Gothic, Vol. 1, an anthology (WordArts, Inc., 2006), pp. 18-22.
• "The Purple Hippopotamus Wading Pool." Strange Horizons, 6 March 2006.
• "Dogwood Winter Coming." DawnSky (now defunct). October 2005.
• "Nobody's That Good All the Time." Southern Gothic, May 2005.
• "Walking Hibernation." Strange Horizons, 4 October 2004.
        Third Place winner of their 2004 Reader's Choice Awards for Fiction.
• "Ribbons. Lightning." Edmonton, AB: On Spec: The Canadian Magazine of the Fantastic (Vol. 16, No. 1, #56, Spring 2004)
• "First Impressions." Falcon: Short Story Contest Winners. (chapbook) Halifax, 1999.

Speculative Poetry

• "Charon's Midlife Crisis." The Magazine of Speculative Poetry. Forthcoming, Spring 2007.
• "Spring in Rutherford County." Dreams and Nightmares. Forthcoming.
• "Last Will and Testament." Chizine, Issue #31, January 2007.
• "The Undead in Hospital." Alba, #14, January 2007.
• "The Bather." Strange Horizons, 3 July 2006.
• "Cherries for Buttons." Strange Horizons, 27 February 2006.
• "Muffler Men Revisited." andwerve, February 2006.
• "Sister, I'm Telling You," "Waiting to Happen" and "We're Still Girls." The Magazine of Speculative Poetry (Vol.7, No.3, Autumn 2005). pp. 2-4.
• "The Greening." Strange Horizons, 17 October 2005.
• "Muffler Men and Uniroyal Girls." Big Toe Review. July 2005.
• "Settler's Song." Strange Horizons, 25 July 2005.
• "The Translator." Ultraverse E-Zine of Science Fiction and Fantasy, Vol. 2, No. 5, July 2005.
• "First Contact." Strange Horizons, 13 June 2005.
• "The Rainy Season." Strange Horizons, 21 March 2005.
        First Place winner of their 2005 Reader's Choice Awards for Poetry.
• "Surface Properties." Strange Horizons, 31 January 2005.
• "Mirror Points." Best of Strange Horizons 2. Edited by Kelli Carlson. Lethe Press, 2004. ISBN 1590210379.
• "No Words." Strange Horizons, 3 February 2003.
• "Mirror Points." Strange Horizons, 23 December 2002.
• "The Angel of Pathology." The Antigonish Review (No. 121, Spring 2000). ISSN 0003-5661.