Joanne Merriam (she/they) is a writer and poet. Her novel Aether and Ego will be released in Fall 2026 by Inanna.
A graduate in English and Mathematics from Dalhousie University, Merriam has worked as a dispatcher, sheet music librarian, and Medicaid claim sorter, and was an executive-level administrative assistant for over 25 years. In 2001, she left her position as the Executive Assistant of the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia to travel Canada by train, and then parts of the United States. Her book of poetry, The Glaze from Breaking (Stride, 2005; reprinted Upper Rubber Boot, 2011), was written, in part, about those travels. In 2004, she immigrated to the USA, residing primarily in Nashville, Tennessee. She became an American citizen in 2019, and returned to Canada in 2024.
From 2011 to 2020, she ran Upper Rubber Boot Books, now on permanent hiatus. They are best known for publishing the first English-language anthology of solarpunk, Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk & Eco-Speculation (eds. Phoebe Wagner and Brontë Wieland). For URB, she was the editor of the anthologies Broad Knowledge: 35 Women Up To No Good, The Museum of All Things Awesome And That Go Boom, How to Live on Other Planets: A Handbook for Aspiring Aliens, and, with H. L. Nelson, Choose Wisely: 35 Women Up To No Good.
Her poetry and fiction has appeared in dozens of magazines and journals, including The Antigonish Review, Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Fiddlehead, and Strange Horizons. (See her writing CV for a complete list.)
She can be reached at joanne -at- upperrubberboot.com.