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Creative Writing and Literary Arts
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Jo-Ann Mapson
Fiction
Teaching Statement
Office: ADM 268
Phone: 786-4394
Email: afjm2@uaa.alaska.edu
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Biography
Jo-Ann grew up in Southern California, attended Johnston College at the University of Redlands, and received her B.A. in English/Creative Writing at California State University Long Beach. In 1992, she received her MFA in Writing at Vermont College in Montpelier where she completed thesis projects in both poetry and fiction.
Her students include writers Joyce Weatherford (Heart of the Beast), Judith Ryan Hendricks (Bread Alone) and bestselling mystery and mainstream author Earlene Fowler (The Saddlemaker's Wife). Her awards include The California Short Story Award sponsored by Squaw Valley Community of Writers and she was a semi-finalist for the Barnes & Noble inaugural Discover Great New Writers Award. Her stories, personal essays and poetry have been widely published and anthologized, most recently in How Joyous His Neigh, stories about horses. Several of her novels have been BookSense 76 picks. Her literary papers are being collected in Boston University's Twentieth Century Writers "The Jo-Ann Mapson Collection."
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Research
Three weeks after graduation, HarperCollins accepted Hank &Chloe, her first novel (and thesis project), for publication. She published four more novels with Harper, Blue Rodeo, which was made into a television movie starring Kris Kristofferson, Shadow Ranch, which explores her family's agricultural history, Loving Chloe, a sequel to Hank & Chloe, and Los Angeles Times bestseller, The Wilder Sisters. Simon & Schuster published Los Angeles Times bestseller, Bad Girl Creek, book one of a trilogy that included Along Came Mary and Goodbye, Earl. Her latest novel is The Owl and Moon Café.
She is at work on a new novel about central California and missing persons, and a memoir about music and family, titled Hand Jive.
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Teaching Responsibilites
Jo-Ann is an assistant professor in the Creative Writing and Literary Arts Department at UAA. She also teaches in Prescott College's MAP Graduate Program in Prescott , Arizona. Her short story collection and nine mainstream novels explore women's roles in contemporary settings, the dwindling landscape of the West, the bonds and limitations of friendship, ethnicity, raising children, the ethical treatment of creatures and in its many forms, the concept of love.
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