Joanna Guthrie was born in London and grew up on the Norfolk-Suffolk border. In 1997 she did a diploma in journalism, and an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Exeter in 2005. A published poet for the last ten years, her first collection, Billack’s Bones, was published by Rialto in 2007. She spent time in a variety of paid and voluntary jobs in England, Europe, India, and America. Her jobs have tended to focus on community areas like homelessness and mental health: Hurricane Season is a travelogue/memoir based on her experiences working in the Florida Keys in a mental health facility. For this she was short-listed in the New Writing Partnership’s Ventures awards for creative non-fiction. She has since been awarded a grant from the Arts Council and research funding by the Society of Authors, enabling a writing trip back to the USA, and the development of Hurricane Season into a book. She moved back to East Anglia two years ago, taking part in 2007 in the local artists’ collective behind the exhibition, Ammunition: Make Art not War.