Photo by Cami Blosser

About Joanne Lehman

I grew up on a chicken farm in Columbiana, Ohio, next door to Appalachia, where I wandered the fields and woods barefoot, played in the “crick,” and made mud pies under the big pine tree. There was no kindergarten for me, only Sunday school in the Leetonia Mennonite Church basement. When I went to first grade at Fairfield School, my teacher, Miss Albright, was the same teacher my mother had for first grade. I stared out the window a lot that year, trying to see my house, which was a couple of miles away.

For years, my elders begged me to “Pay attention.” I liked to talk, sometimes loudly. They cautioned me, saying, “Your voice carries.” Decades later, I still find my attention wandering to small details. The beauty of woods and fields and human relationships find their way into poems, essays, and stories. I share my particular view, in particular language and allow this voice of mine to carry beauty, hope, grace, and abundance to my readers.

  • Wisdom About Writing

    “Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer.”

    ― Barbara Kingsolver

  • Wisdom about Writing

    "For me, writing is not about filling my head with ideas then downloading them to the page. That's not writing; it's typing. Writing is an unfolding of what's goin on inside me as I talk to myself on a pad of paper or a computer . . . “

    — Parker Palmer

  • Wisdom About Writing

    “A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well, they strengthen their souls. Storytellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper.”

    ― Ursula K. Le Guin

  • Wisdom About Writing

    “A writer is not so much someone who has something to say as [she] is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things [she] would not have thought of if [she] had not started to say them.”

    ― William Stafford

More about Joanne

A communications professional, writer, and teacher, Joanne’s career path has had its twists and turns. She’s worked as a freelance journalist, a community relations specialist for mental health, and as an adjunct writing and literature professor. Along the way she’s done stints at a greenhouse, an antiques store, and a fabric store where she taught sewing classes. She’s a mom who gardened, canned tomatoes, and redecorated a few homes. A student who dropped out of college, she eventually returned to earn a bachelor’s degree in communication arts from Malone University in Canton, Ohio, and a master of fine arts degree in creative writing from Ashland University, Ashland, Ohio.  

Joanne’s publications include a full-length book of poems, Fountain Nook, (The Orchard Street Press 2018), Driving in the Fog (Finishing Line Press 2013), and Morning Song (Kent State University Press 2005), that received the 2004 Wick Poetry Prize from Kent State University. Her first work of fiction is Kairos: a novel (HeraldPress 2005). A nonfiction book, Traces of Treasure, Quest for God in the Commonplace (Herald Press 1994), won a Silver Angel for Religion in Media.

Since retiring from teaching in 2020, Joanne writes inspirational fiction. She is a member of the Women’s Fiction Writers Association, and works regularly with her critique partners, Pam and Nanette, to develop and refine her novels. Joanne and her husband, Ralph, an attorney, have been married for over fifty years and live in Wooster, Ohio. They have two children, four grandchildren, and eight great grandchildren.