Name Joanne Leedom-Ackerman | Role Novelist | |
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Books The dark path to the river, No marble angels | ||
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, and the short story collection No Marble Angels, 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.
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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, 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, she is the former International Secretary (2004-2007) and former Chair of their Writers in Prison Committee (1993-1997). Past president of PEN Center USA, she has served on the board and as Vice President of PEN American Center, and currently serves on the boards of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation, Poets & Writers, the International Center for Journalists, the International Crisis Group, Refugees International and Words Without Borders and is a member of the ICRW Leadership Council.
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. 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 and on the Advisory Board of the Brown Women Writers Project. She is an emeritus trustee of both universities.
Leedom-Ackerman is an emeritus Director of Human Rights Watch where she chaired the Asia Advisory Board. 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, 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, 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.