Joan King, Author

TIME has a habit of circling around.

 

I grew up southwest of Guthrie, Oklahoma on a farm that has been in my family for over a hundred years. As a child, my parents, grandparents and two generations of aunts and uncles fed me family stories—tales of love, hardships, history and a few secrets. I worked with my parents in the fields during the summers, spending long days on a tractor driving round and round. To keep myself entertained, I wrote stories in my head and dreamed of becoming a writer. I signed up for journalism class in high school the next fall to discover reporting facts wasn’t nearly as fun as making them up. That convinced me to try a different career.

 

I received my bachelor’s and master’s degree in music education from the University of Central Oklahoma and taught band in the Oklahoma public schools for fourteen years, playing, writing and arranging music in my spare time. In 1990, I moved to Florida with my husband to manage his law office.

 

The desire to write always remained. Eventually, it worked its way forward. This time though, I wrote down my stories. My novel, Let the Dead Bury the Dead, won the Florida Writers Royal Palm Literary Award for best unpublished mainstream book. A short story developed from the novel rose to the semi-finals of the Katherine Ann Porter Prize for Fiction.

 

I still travel back to the farm several times a year. I enjoy climbing on the tractor to brush-hog along our creek and behind the pond. To entertain myself, I write stories in my head.

 

I hope you’ll read my work. Thank you for visiting my webpage.

 

Joan King

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