Joanna Pearson

Joanna Pearson is an American novelist, short story writer, poet, and psychiatrist.

She published a book of short stories, Every Human Love, in 2019 and a mystery-thriller novel, Bright and Tender Dark, in 2024. Pearson is a recipient of the Donald Justice Poetry Prize and the Drue Heinz Literature Prize.

Early life and education
Pearson grew up in Cleveland County, North Carolina. She was presented to society at the North Carolina Debutante Ball in Raleigh in 1999.

Pearson graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2002. She obtained a master of fine arts degree in poetry from the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars and a medical degree from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

Career
Her short stories have appeared in The Alaska Quarterly Review, storySouth, Blackbird, Colorado Review, Mississippi Review, Shenandoah, and Joyland. In 2012, she won the Donald Justice Poetry Prize. Her short story Changeling was honored as a distinguished story in The Best American Short Stories in 2015. In May 2019, she published a collection of short stories as a book, titled Every Human Love. In 2021, she was awarded the Drue Heinz Literature Prize. She was nominated for the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize and a Virginia Literary Award. She was the only North Carolinian in South Arts' inaugural class of State Fellows for Literary Arts.

Her debut novel, Bright and Tender Dark, was published by Bloomsbury Press in 2024. The novel is a mystery-thriller work.

Pearson also works as a psychiatrist.

Personal life
Pearson lives in Carrboro, North Carolina with her husband and two children.