Meet Professor Joanna Ruocco, Creative Writing

Professor Joanna Ruocco is an award-winning novelist, short story writer, and editor. She writes across several genres, including fantasy and romance. In 2008, she co-founded a handmade annual literary magazine, Birkensnake, that The New York Times called a “sacred art object.” Today, she is the Chair of the Board of Directors of Fiction Collective Two (FC2), an independent press that has published over 200 books of innovative fiction since 1973.

At Wake Forest University, Professor Ruocco teaches fiction writing workshops that facilitate creative exploration and production. Students read recently published novels and stories from a wide range of literary traditions and experiment with different approaches to crafting their own narratives. A creative writing workshop is a laboratory of the imagination, a place where the never-before-seen flickers into being.

Professor Ruocco loves sharing these generative moments with young writers and is dedicated to supporting each writer’s growth as a thinker, observer, and creator. She is thrilled to act as a faculty sponsor of the monthly Creative Writing Salon Series (featuring student poets, fiction writers, non-fiction writers, musicians, and more) and to co-direct the Dillon Johnston Writers Reading Series (check the English Department website for a schedule of upcoming events!).