Author photo courtesy of Marilyn Dalrymple

 

 

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As a freelance writer for most of her life, Joan has written hundreds of articles for specialty markets like Saddle & Bridle (she has written for virtually every major horse magazine in the country) as well as mass-market periodicals like Reader's Digest Her award-winning articles and personality profiles have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, Westways, Black Warrior Review, Mc Sweeney's, and Poets & Writers.  She is currently working on her memoirs about living among the Maya in Belize (formerly British Honduras).  "Teacher Returns to the Town Where She Turned Twenty-One" is an account of Joan's return to Belize for the first time in nearly fifty years.


Playboy, Joan's first horse, belonged to her next-door neighbors.  She didn't have a horse of her own until she moved to California and bought a 16-hand black Thoroughbred/Quarter Horse cross named Bachelor.  Joan's first published article was about him, and it appeared in Western Horseman as "Wooing a Shy Bachelor."  (Confronted with anything new and strange, Bachelor would shy.  Joan usually fell off.) 

 

 

Thanks to Bachelor, Joan learned about the utilitarian value and elegance of dressage, one of the Olympic equestrian events.  The Beginning Dressage Book, which she co-authored, was first published in 1981; it remained in print for 11 years.  (Joan no longer falls off when her horse shies.)  A republication, with new photos and artwork, was published by The Lyons Press in 2004.  In 2005, Lyons also published Joan's latest book, Backyard Horsekeeping:  The Only Guide You'll Ever Need.  A revised edition came out in April, 2007.
 

 

Photo by Avis Girdler

 

Other works by Joan include:

Faces:  The Cowboy and the Saddlebred

Dena Tanner Lopez

Stamp This Into Your Brain: Get the Message--or Else!

 

To contact Joan, send e-mail to: joan@joanfry.com