The Short Version

Joan Wolf’s 47 novels cross many genres. She started writing regency romances then progressed to historical novels, pre-historical novels, historical mysteries, contemporary romances and biblical fiction. She is presently at work on a new regency romance.

Joan was born in the Bronx, New York. She received her M.A. in English and Comparative Literature from Hunter College of the City University of New York and taught high school English for a number of years before she began to write. She presently lives in Connecticut with her husband Joe, cat Willie Blue Eyes and dog Penny. Her children and horse live nearby.

The Rest of The Story

The Bronx was a terrific place to live when I was growing up. All the parks had basketball hoops and we played punch ball and roller-skated and jumped rope- every sport had its season. No one ever locked their doors and we went in and out of apartment houses to play hide n’ seek and put on shows in the communal back yard for all the neighbors. And, of course, we took the train a few stops to Yankee Stadium where we had free tickets from the Police Athletic League and cheered for Mickey Mantle and company. I am still a devoted Yankee fan.

It was a wonderful, self-contained little Irish Catholic world and our only worry was if the ice cream truck would come too late at night for us to get our popsicles.

I went to St. Nicholas of Tolentine grammar school and high school, where I played varsity basketball. I went to Mercy College, a girls’ college (of course), where I met friends I have kept until this day. Then I left the Bronx to venture into Manhattan to do my Master’s at Hunter College – which, at that time had some of the most brilliant scholars in the world teaching in the English Department.

Then I got a job as a caseworker for the New York City Social Services Department and saw how the other half of the Bronx lived. A bit of a shock, but I learned a lot.

Moving on, I began work on my Ph.D. at Fordham University and got a job teaching at Cardinal Spellman High School in the Bronx, where I had the pleasure of teaching A.P. English to Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Next, I got married and had a child.

No more teaching for Joan. In those days a mom stayed at home, which is what I did. We bought a house and moved to Connecticut, where I didn’t know a soul. I adored my son, but he wasn’t much of a conversationalist, and my husband was at work all day, so I decided to amuse myself and write a book. It was a Regency romance because Georgette Heyer was one of my favorite writers and I knew the period.

I was lucky. Regency romances were just starting to become hot and I got a contract from NAL to write three books. Then another contract and another and then I wrote some contemporaries and finally I got to write the book of my dreams – The Road to Avalon about my life’s hero King Arthur.

Forty-seven books later, here I am starting out again in the new world of e-books. I love it that I can write what I want, not what the publisher thinks I should write. I love it that I don’t have any deadlines! Writing is fun again and I hope you’ll look for my new books and enjoy reading them as much as I’m enjoying writing them.