Joan Druett was born in Nelson, and raised in Palmerston North, moving to New Zealand's capital city, Wellington, when she was 16.

She went to America as a Fulbright Scholar in 1986, and returned there in 1992 as historian/writer for a museum exhibit, "The Sailing Circle: Seafaring Women of New York," living in Orient, Long Island, where she and her husband, Ron, a maritime artist, were artists in residence at the William Steeple Davis Trust house and studio.

In her later career, she has become best known for her Wiki Coffin novels, historical mysteries focusing on the eponymous half-Māori seaman protagonist.

The Wiki character grew out of her research into real people, including descriptions of a Maori sailor in a midshipman's journal from the first half of the nineteenth century.

[2] In addition to the novels, Druett has also published several short stories featuring Wiki Coffin in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine.