Joanne Arnott, a Metis/mixed blood writer, was born in Winnipeg, and has lived thirty years in Musqueam traditional territories on the west coast. Mother to six children ranging in age from three to twenty years, Joanne has been a literary performer and publishing poet since the mid-1980s. She worked for many years as an Unlearning Racism facilitator, and continues to incorporate social justice perspectives and peer counselling approaches in her work. She lives with her husband and children in Richmond, BC.

Her first book, Wiles of Girlhood (Press Gang, 1991), won the Gerald Lampert Award. She has since published five additional books. These include poetry, a children's illustrated story and a nonfiction collection. She is the author of Steepy Mountain: Love Poetry (Kegedonce Press, 2004), and most recently Mother Time: Poems New and Selected, about the many roles involved in being and becoming a mother.