Joanna Ruocco

Joanna Ruocco is a prize-winning American author and co-editor of the fiction journal Birkensnake.

In 2013, she received the Pushcart Prize for her story "If the Man Took" and is also winner of the Catherine Doctorow Innovative Fiction Prize.

Ruocco received her MFA at Brown, and a Ph.D. in creative writing from the University of Denver.

She also serves as assistant professor in creative writing at Wake Forest University.

Ruocco has also published romance novels under the pseudonyms Toni Jones, Alessandra Shahbaz, and Joanna Lowell.