Joan holds two master’s degrees: Theater and Education. Her desire to teach in the theater department at UNLV led to her appointment as an acting and theater history professor. Five years later, Joan founded and was the artistic director of the Meadows Playhouse, Las Vegas’s first year-round theater. Her interest in film brought her entrance to the American Film Institute in Los Angeles as a producing fellow. Before she graduated, Joan wrote her first screenplay and continued to write for film in Hollywood over the next 15 years.
Joan began her writing journey with her memoir, 60, Sex & Tango, Confessions of a Beatnik Boomer. Other books followed: I’m the Boss of Me: Stay Sexy, Smart & Strong at Any Age, a compilation of her most popular blog posts, An Accidental Cuban, a thriller set in modern-day Havana. Her next book, Once A Homecoming Queen, is a darkly humorous take on senior alcoholism. A motivational speaker, yoga and meditation instructor, and longtime contributor to HuffPost and Sixty and Me, Joan now lives in Austin, Texas, where she recently published the first book of a trilogy, Up From Hell Echoes of Past: Crimes in Central Texas Book 1.
