Joanna Woods

Joanna Woods was born in Dublin, but has been based in New Zealand for many years. During the course of her husband’s diplomatic career, she has lived in Bahrain, France, Greece, Iran, Italy, the United States and Russia, where she gained her doctorate on Katherine Mansfield from Moscow State University.
Since returning to Wellington in 1999, Dr Woods has been a full-time writer and has written three biographies. She has also contributed to a number of publications. In 2005, she was the Research Fellow at the National and Turnbull Libraries, where much of the research for her book Facing the Music: Charles Baeyertz and the Triad was done. Her chief interests are literature and languages, but she is a keen supporter of all the arts.

Joanna will be appearing at the Auckland Writers Festival on 15 May 2009 with British biographer Ann Thwaite. They will talk about their books, which share migration as a major theme, and their experience of research into other people’s lives.