Dr. Lester is the author of six critically acclaimed books. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, USA Today, CNN, Ebony, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Black Issues Book Review, Ms., Cosmopolitan, Common Dreams, and Huffington Post, among others.
Recognitions include the National Lesbian and Gay Siegenthaler Award for Commentary on NPR, a Finalist Award for the PEN/Bellweather Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction (for Mama’s Child), and the Arts & Letters Creative Nonfiction Finalist Award for her Fannie Lou Hamer essay (adapted in her blog). Her memoir Loving Before Loving: A Marriage in Black and White won the PEN-Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award, was a Finalist for the Story Circle Sarton Award and the Foreword Indie Award, won the Montaigne Medal for the Eric Hoffer Awards, and was nominated for the Northern California Book Award.
The San Francisco’s Women’s Heritage Museum selected Taking Charge as a Best Women’s Book. Amazon named Taking Charge one of its “10 Best Business Books for Women” and the Washington Post included Fire In My Soul in its top-listed, “What Washingtonians are Reading.” Her books have been excerpted in publications as varied as Essence, Black Issues in Higher Education, Ebony, Executive Female, and numerous anthologies.
She attended the Community of Writers in 2003. www.joanlester.com