Joanne Leedom-Ackerman

Joanne Leedom-Ackerman "is a novelist, short story writer, and journalist. Her works of fiction include The Dark Path to the River and No Marble Angels. A former reporter for The Christian Science Monitor, Ms. Leedom-Ackerman has won awards for her nonfiction and has published stories and essays in numerous books, magazines and periodicals. She is a Vice President of International P.E.N, has served as Chair of International P.E.N.’s Writers in Prison Committee and a member of the Board of Trustees of the International P.E.N. Foundation. She is past president of PEN Center USA West and currently is Vice President of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation and on the board of Poets and Writers. She also serves on the board of Human Rights Watch, the International Crisis Group, the International Center for Journalists and on the Chairman’s Advisory Council of the United States Institute of Peace. She is a Trustee of Johns Hopkins University and a Trustee Emeritus of Brown University.

"Ms. Leedom-Ackerman has taught writing at New York University, City University of New York, the University of California at Los Angeles extension, and Occidental College. She holds Master of Arts degrees from Brown University and Johns Hopkins University and graduated from Principia College."

She is a member of the Board of Trustees of Johns Hopkins University and was a trustee of Brown University, the Advisory Board of the Brown Women Writers Project and the Advisory Board of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. She has served on the Board of Trustees of Save the Children and currently serves on Save the Children's Advisory Board on Early Childhood Development and was on the Board of the Albert Einstein Institution. She was an adviser on the recent PBS documentary A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict. She is a member of American P.E.N., P.E.N. USA West, English P.E.N. and the Authors' Guild.

Ms. Leedom-Ackerman is married to Peter Ackerman and has two sons.