Meet a Member: Joan Leotta

National Federation of Press Women loves new members. One of our newest members is Joan Leotta of North Carolina. She is an award winning journalist , short story and book author. I have enjoyed getting to know her better. She is another unique and unbelievable NFPW member. Meet my new friend Joan Leotta.

Name:  Joan Leotta

Joan Leotta

City and State: Calabash, North Carolina

Affiliate and any leadership positions: North Carolina Press Club. I tried to join Media Women of South Carolina as well, but was not successful in hitting the right buttons on the online form.

Years a member of NFPW: Only one—I cannot believe that for the 30 years I worked as a journalist (freelance) I thought you had to be on staff of a paper to join presswomen.

Tell us a little about you

Joan Leotta has been playing with words on page and stage since childhood. In addition to her work as an award-winning journalist, short story writer, author, poet and essayist, Joan performs folklore and one-woman shows on historic figures. She currently has two folklore shows on Strong Women, (one folk stories and one using real women), and three one-woman historic figure shows, one featuring the spy Belle Boyd, another featuring a colonial woman who meets George Washington, and a third called a Time to Heal that depicts a Civil War Nurse. To have her speak on writing or perform for your group, contact her at joanleotta@gmail.com.

As a journalist, she has written for the Washington Post, has had columns in other Washington D.C. area papers and currently writes regularly for the Myrtle Beach Sun News. Joan has poems, short stories and essays current or forthcoming in the Knox Literary Magazine, and Eastern Iowa Review and Silver Birch Review. She has been published by Chicken Soup for the Soul and in several other anthologies including the Fish or Cut Bait 2015 Sisters in Crime Guppies anthology.

Her four books of historical fiction (Legacy of Honor series), including the most recent Secrets of the Heart, are available from Desert Breeze Publishing and on Amazon.com along with her newly released collection of short stories, Simply a Smile, (http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_0_11?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=joan+leotta&sprefix=joan+leotta%2Caps%2C366). Her first picture book, Whoosh! (about a father and young daughter’s day out sledding) can be pre-ordered from TheaQ.com and will be released August 2015.After a lifetime in snowier climes, Joan now lives in Calabash, NC where she walks the beach with husband Joe. She collects shells, pressed pennies and memories.

Any career advice you would give? Persistence and honesty.

Which talent would you most like to have?

Music!!! Singing, playing an instrument.

If you could live anywhere, where would it be?

I am happy here – where is not as important to me as with whom. But if our daughter could be close, I would not mind a perch on the Amalfi coast drive.

What book are you reading?

Just finished the Nightingale and am about to start Circling the Sun.

Also reading slowly a bio of Michelangelo that interprets his life through his great works.

What would people be surprised to learn about you? I am really shy.

Why is your affiliate and NFPW important to you?

It has opened me up to new resources and new ways to share with others as I learn more about the organization.

Way to follow you on a website, twitter, Facebook, etc.

You can learn more at www.joanleotta.wordpress.com and https://www.facebook.com/pages/Joan-Leotta-Author-and-Story-Performer/188479350973

My twitter handle is beachfan12  but I hardly ever tweet.

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Tags: Joan Leotta, Knox Literary Magazine, Myrtle Beach Sun News, North Carolina, Washington Post

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