Joanne Merriam is a science fiction writer, poet, and editor. From 2011 to 2020, she was the Publisher at Upper Rubber Boot Books, which is now on permanent hiatus. URB published numerous anthologies, perhaps most notably the first English-language anthology of solarpunk, Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk & Eco-Speculation (eds. Phoebe Wagner and Bronté Wieland).
A graduate in English and Mathematics from Dalhousie University, she has worked as an oil and gas lease and title administrator, sheet music librarian, and Medicaid claim sorter, and has been an executive-level assistant for over 20 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 Northeastern and Southern United States. Her book of poetry, The Glaze from Breaking (Stride, 2005; 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.
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.
She is 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.
She can be reached at joanne -at- upperrubberboot.com.
Drawing by Danielle Corsetto.
