Joan Canby was raised and educated in Santa Barbara, CA. Her family had a citrus ranch and grew avocados, oranges, and English black walnuts. She had restless feet and obtained her bachelor’s degree at the University of Wisconsin, Madison in Comparative Literature. She has a lifelong love of languages and reads in Spanish, French, Italian, German, and Swedish. She lived in Italy after WI and studied at the Universita per Stranieri in Perugia and the University of Rome. She returned to the US to study Latin at the University of California at Berkeley. She obtained her Master’s in Comparative Literature at San Fran-cisco State College. She later obtained her MFA in Poetry at Vermont College of Fine Arts at Montpelier. She moved to TX to work as a Technical Writer for General Dynamics. She later spent many years working in telecommunications and lived in Stockholm, Sweden. She has written a biography of Marie Louise, Napoleon’s 2nd wife; cooking articles; interviews; and travel articles. In 2001, she fell in love with poetry. She pivoted to leave corporate to teach English, ESL, Humanities at Dallas College and the University of Texas at Dallas. She taught Writer’s Garret classes on Egyptian Poetry, Japanese Haiku and Senryu, Dante Alghieri, Rumi, Witness Poets of Africa, and Russian poetry of the 20th century. She has taught Life Stories: How to Write Your Memoir at a Dallas library. Her poetry appears widely in small presses. Her first book was Metaxe, inspired by a trip to the Holy Land. Her second book with Assure Press was Cascades. While not reading, teaching or writing, she practices Chopin. Her devotion to the piano and to poetry is equaled to her devotion to raising Scottish Terriers.
Paperback: 140 pages
Publisher: Kelsay Books (August 1, 2026)