Joanna Maitland

Joanna was born in Scotland, of Scottish/Irish extraction and was educated in Glasgow. She studied modern languages and history at Glasgow University, including a year in France as an English-language assistante, and a semester at a university in Germany. During those periods she was introduced to French eating habits and German beer-drinking — as well as niceties of the languages — and developed an enduring fondness for both countries.

When Joanna left university in the late '60s, there were few real opportunities for a career-minded female — equal opportunity law was some years off. She became a graduate trainee for a small manufacturing company where she soon specialized in finance and systems, but could not, as a woman, achieve her ambition of becoming a manager of people. She solved that problem by winning a commission in the Royal Air Force — where she could.

After her marriage, she resigned from the RAF and returned to civilian life, first as a systems analyst, and later as a civil servant, commuting daily to London. Her work there was varied and fascinating and involved considerable travel in Europe and the Far East, as well as large sums of public money! She also spent a period as chief executive of a charity, using her management skills to reorganize and refocus it, and newly acquired PR skills to push its message on radio and in print. Since 1996, Joanna has been working for herself as a part-time business consultant, in order to enjoy family life and to make time for her writing and voluntary work.

Joanna and her husband live in southern England, though they are planning to move farther north. Now that their son and daughter have grown up, the couple are enjoying the freedom to travel the world, at whatever time suits them best. Trips are planned for several years hence. In between, Joanna enjoys reading, music, gardening, needlework, and walking, especially in countryside that reminds her of her native Scotland.

Joanna started writing for her two children when they were small, and then progressed to writing adult fiction, mainly historical. She finds the research absorbing and has become a part-time history student at the local university. Her short stories have been published under various pseudonyms in literary and women’s magazines.

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