Joan F. Smith

Joan F. Smith is the author of The Other Side of Infinity andThe Half-Orphan's Handbook, a dance instructor, and a former associate dean of creative writing. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College. Joan lives and writes in Massachusetts, where she was the 2021 Writer-in-Residence at the Milton Public Library. When she's not writing, she's either wrangling her kids, embarking on a new hobby she will quickly abandon, or listening to podcasts on a run. 

Favorite non-reading activity? 

Dance! I'm a trained dancer (I danced in the Probowl) and I teach it now.

Is your go to comfort food sweet or savory? Is it something you make yourself? Does food inspire your writing? 

I'm definitely a savory girl. I was a person who tried as hard as she could to enjoy cooking, accepted graciously the fact that I did not, and lucky for everyone in my house, my husband developed an interest in it. The only thing I make regularly is a frittata, which I eat every day, and does not particularly inspire my writing (though I do have a scene in my next novel where a character receives dramatic information while making my frittata, so I guess that's something!). 

Not all books are for all readers… when you start a book and you just don’t like it, how long do you read until you bail? 

This varies completely. I often won't make it past the first few pages if I'm not going to read it, but I've also abandoned a book with two chapters to go before.

What do you worry about? 

As a writer, I worry about the answerable questions. What happens after we die? Is there an afterlife? Is this our only life, How was the universe formed? A lot of my writing is inspired by various answers to these. As a human, I worry about the people in my life who I love, and I fear the pain of losing them. 

What brings you great joy? 

Kitchen dance parties with my kids!