Joanna Higgins has taught literature and writing at colleges and universities in Michigan, England, Pennsylvania, New York, and Hawaii. Her fiction and plays have received recognition and awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. She has written a novel, A Soldier’s Book (Permanent Press, 1998), which Bobbie Ann Mason called, “Powerful, beautifully written, painful, and evocative,” and a collection of short stories, The Importance of High Places (Milkweed Editions, 1993), which Kirkus Reviews praised as “fascinating tales of spiritual transcendence” and “a memorable experience.”