Joanne Leedom-Ackerman is a novelist, short story writer, and journalist. Her fiction includes regional bestseller The Dark Path to the River and No Marble Angels. She has also published fiction and essays in books and anthologies, including Short Stories of the Civil Rights Movement and Remembering Arthur Miller.

Joanne Leedom-Ackerman is a novelist, short story writer, and journalist. Her works of fiction, well and widely reviewed, include regional bestseller The Dark Path to the River and No Marble Angels. She has also published fiction and essays in books and anthologies, including Short Stories of the Civil Rights Movement; Remembering Arthur Miller; Snakes: An Anthology of Serpent Tales, Fiction and Poetry by Texas Women, the Bicentennial Collection of Texas Short Stories and Beyond Literacy.

Looking for books by Joanne Leedom-Ackerman? See all books authored by Joanne Leedom-Ackerman, including No Marble Angels, and The Dark Path to the River, and more.

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. She has also published fiction and essays in books and anthologies, including Short Stories of the Civil Rights Movement; Remembering Arthur Miller; Electric Grace; Snakes: An Anthology of Serpent Tales; Beyond Literacy; Women For All Seasons; Fiction and Poetry by Texas Women; The Bicentennial Collection of Texas Short Stories; What You Can Do. Joanne is a Vice President of International PEN and the former International Secretary of International PEN and former Chair of International PEN’s Writers in Prison Committee. Past president of PEN Center USA, she currently serves on the boards of PEN American Center, the PEN/Faulkner Foundation, Poets and Writers, the International Center for Journalists, Human Rights Watch, and the International Crisis Group. She lives in Washington, DC.

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. She has also published fiction and essays in books and anthologies, including Short Stories of the Civil Rights Movement; Remembering Arthur Miller; Electric Grace; Snakes: An Anthology of Serpent Tales; Beyond Literacy; Women For All Seasons; Fiction and Poetry by Texas Women; The Bicentennial Collection of Texas Short Stories; What You Can Do.

2018 DKA Distinguished Alumni Award recipient

Joanne Leedom-Ackerman (C’68) is a novelist, short story writer, and journalist. Her works of fiction include The Dark Path to the River and No Marble Angels. Her short fiction and essays appear in a variety of books and anthologies.

Leedom-Ackerman’s (No Marble Angels) first novel contains the raw seeds of a fine work unrealized. A promising themetwo journalists’ personal quests played against the turbulent backdrop of African politicsis diffused by uneven characterizations and conflict development and flat, reportorial prose. Tough-edged yet vulnerable loner Olivia, a black journalist in a slump, and earth mother Jenny, insecure in the face of a second pregnancy, an unfinished book and a chasm in her marriage to a Wall Street banker, share a seminal past journalistic assignment in a politically ravaged African countryan experience that permeates present events, yet from which the reader remains psychologically distanced. Appearances at the U.N. by the Nations’ Liberation Organization and fanatic despot Bulgawi prompt Olivia and Jenny to pursue NLO leaders Jamin and Nyral through a tame vision of New York’s underside to uncover their mysterious financial backers. Haunted by unaired ghosts, Jamin and Olivia’s stilted encounters poorly convey the tensions of their ambiguous relationship. As Olivia is pulled into the NLO plot at its climax, provocative questions of gender and racial identity arise that demand earlier dramatic grounding. Jenny’s domestic conflict is handled with more conviction, though marred by a predictable love triangle. While touching a universal pulse, the conventional details of Jenny’s protected world lack the imaginative spark that would make her seem less self-indulgent. More important, Leedom-Ackerman does not provide the compelling portrait of Africa that the story needs and deserves.